The first time the two-time wanted fraudster was noticed was on 10 August at a petrol station in Bonn's Weststadt. He filled up a silver Opel Astra convertible and drove away without paying. In order to disguise his identity, he had attached stolen number plates to the vehicle. Two months later, the man filled up his tank in the same way at a petrol station in Beuel. When the police published the photos from the respective surveillance cameras one after the other in mid-December, the perpetrator was quickly identified.

HIGHER COSTS

The energy crisis also affects petrol station operators

According to the Central Association of Petrol Station Operators, the increase in fuel fraud offences is hitting businesses in an already difficult economic situation. In addition to the increased minimum wage, energy prices are driving up operating costs by leaps and bounds. With the expiry of current supply contracts, many petrol station operators will have to reckon with a tenfold increase in energy costs over the next few months for an average consumption of around 100,000 kilowatt hours per year. According to the association, this also applies if the location is already equipped with energy-efficient consumers such as LED lights. Because petrol stations usually sell about 70 per cent price-linked goods, the operators can hardly pass on the increased costs to the end consumers.

Operators consistently file charges

Many of the perpetrators do not expect their pictures to be published, Norbert Dargel suspects. He has been in the business for 25 years and runs the bft petrol station on Kölnstraße. No matter whether someone steals fuel for five, ten or 50 euros, he consistently reports them to the police. Surely, here and there there is "a absent-minded professor" who gets into the car after filling up. As a rule, they appear in person immediately after the report with an apology. In such cases, he then weighs up how to proceed. However, it is rather rare that he withdraws the complaint against the compensation of costs. "As a rule, people do it intentionally.

Gerd Assenmacher confirms the increase in cases in Bonn. He runs the Westfalen petrol station in Röttgen and another one in Bornheim. "Basically since the price of petrol was more than two euros for the first time," he estimates the timing of the massive increase in retrospect. He has also been observing for years that fuel thefts increase during the dark season. Perhaps the thieves are counting on the fact that the surveillance cameras provide bad pictures in the dark, Assenmacher speculates.

Modern systems provide security

The perpetrators are wrong in this assessment. "Today's systems deliver such sharp images that we can read the writing on small stickers," says Assenmacher. To make this possible, he invested around 20,000 euros in modern technology. There are no gaps in the records. "It is enough for someone to drive across the site," says Assenmacher. By combining the person, a vehicle sticker and the type of vehicle, he has already been able to identify a thief who had removed the number plates without any further research effort. "The sticker was from a football club, you could only get it if you were a member," Assenmacher said.

For each fraud, the tenant delivers four pictures with faces, complete persons, number plates and vehicles to a company that prosecutes and handles such cases for him. After that, the mills of bureaucracy grind, regardless of whether someone forgot to pay or intentionally cheated.

Security systems at the petrol pump

Heinrich Ludwig put a stop to the problem at his LPG filling station on Königswinterer Straße in Beuel when he took over 15 years ago. At that time, he bought all the petrol pumps one after the other and had them equipped with a card payment system in addition to the regular filling functions. This means that the fuel only flows out of the nozzle if the system has previously identified an EC or credit card as a valid means of payment and stored the data. "Otherwise you just can't fill up," Ludwig stated dryly.

According to Jürgen Ziegner of the Central Association of Petrol Station Operators with around 3000 members, not all locations are equally affected. Petrol stations with a high proportion of regular customers in remote areas were less affected by the problem than centrally located, confusing petrol stations in the middle of the city or near easily accessible exits.

While perpetrators filled their tanks without paying a total of 640 times in Bonn in 2019, the police crime statistics for 2020 showed 560 offences. In 2021, the number dropped by around 35 per cent to a total of 364. In contrast, this year, according to the preliminary figures, the offences of fuel fraud increased "by a clear double-digit percentage", according to police spokesman Michael Beyer. The clearance rate in 2020 was about 41 per cent. The probability of a clear-up increases significantly if usable images from surveillance cameras are available, the spokesman said.

Reasons for the lack of usable images can be, for example, dirty lenses on the cameras. If the theft is processed late, data protection regulations also prevent the effective prosecution of the crime because the recordings usually have to be deleted after 48 hours.

(Original text: Petra Reuter; Translation: Mareike Graepel)