lets hear your power theft stories

[kooman]

lets hear some stories from your area, we have had several cases of meter tampering, stolen meters from other systems in our sockets, before the digital days lots of upside down meters, jumper wires, and probably my favorite comes from our neighbor utility, guys meter pulled for non pay, so he sticks butter knife blades in the socket, gets caught so they remove the hot line clamp from trans, so this guy leans a ladder against pole, takes a piece of pvc with a hook on end and lands the clamp. i have also heard of the 2x4 with a nail in it to refuse the cutout when pulled for non payment.

[Pootnaigle]

Ummmm we found one with a Tee in between the roof and the eaves of a business. It Had taps and for insulation the guy ran the wire thru a waterhose. That ran all of the airconditiong and heavy loads, and basically all that was metered was lights. They figured this had been going on for over 20 yrs.
Had another guy that installed a tiny electronic photo cell on the Potential latch of his meter. Everything used after dark was free. Found one other where the guy had painstakingly dissassembled the gears in the meter and reassembled them slowing the reading significantly.
Most utilities start monitoring usage as soon as an account is made active, and any significant drops result in further investigation.They caught an electrician with taps ahead of the meter ,On investigation they discovered he had done the same thing at his fathers house and his brothers. In Texas if they catch you cheating a meter they can esitmate how long you've been doing it, then estimate how much you beat em out of, and backbill you accordingly.

[rcdallas]

At a metering school I attended they showed us a digital meter with a switch. The little brass jumper on back was opened up, just put a switch there.

Had to play a game once with someone where I tripped the CSP off, couple days go by and the switch was back on. Probably a board with a nail in it. Taking the hot line clamp off ended that.

[wtdoor67]

I told the one about the guy using a ladder and a garden rake to put a hotclamp on.

Funny one was told by a guy I knew. I think the meter had been removed at this location. Guy decided he would jumper the jaws etc. Anyway there was a big scalded place on the meter base and the best part was the chicken wire fence just next to the meter that had the outline of a human figure with the arms thrown up. Could only imagine the hilarity if you had witnessed it.

[loodvig]

One trick found by our meter dept. was a small hole drilled through the glass/plastic from the bottom of the meter and a piece of wire could be put in so to stop the disk from turning. The bad guy knew what day the meter reader came by and he would just removed the wire. But like someone already posted and big change in usage puts up a flag now.
I found some 400W flood lights all hooked up to our secondarys at a baseball field with no metering at all! Our own style connectors were used too!

[Pootnaigle]

Yeah and probably one of yer cowerkers put em up there too.Prolly the lights were identical to those used by the power company Eh?

[rcdallas]

But to stay on topic, the business manager of local 66 Houston had some apartments in South Houston with all utilities paid and had the meters tapped. He lost his high paying jobs and had to make up all payments and came very close to being somebody's new girlfriend in prison. I forgot his last name, but his know handle was PEEWEE. That alone in Huntsville, made you a prom date.

LMAO!!

You sure do have a purdy mouth there mister business agent!

I've heard 66 has quite a bit of funds in the bank?

[neil macgregor]

working in northern ireland about 11 years ago i was working on a tranny pole
and my work instrucsions said there was 2 cables on the pole but there was 3
so i did all 3 and told the boss about the extra one
next day he asked me about it and i told him what i did
so we head over to the pole and trace the cable some guy appears with a shot gun and starts going mental .now we're in northern ireland at the time
and im shitting a brick so i said **** this im out of here
ended up the guy got a £17000 fine he used to work for NIE and they sacked him for rigging meters

[Squizzy]

Quite a few years ago one of our South crews went to change a pole that had a cable on it that shouldn't have been. They had a look around and found the pillar on the other end over a back fence instead of on the front property boundry. So the inspectors come out and it turns out to be another utilities guys house who put the pillar in to feed his hydroponic cannabis set up, sufficed to say he was sacked lol...

[PSE Lineman]

My favorite one was the pvc coming up through the foundation to a recessed meter base. The pot growers cut away the sheet rock in the garage, sliced the pipe, pulled the hot legs apart, clamped on some temp clamps for anpther 200 amp panel nailed to the wall. Had 26 ballasts for 52 lights, 12 hours on and off. The thing that got them busted? They let the landscape go to hell, wouldn't keep the yard up! Off duty cop walking his dog smelled a "skunk", if ya know what I mean, the rest was history....