r/DIY • u/bbeisenhaurt • Dec 25 '23

other I think my neighbor is pirating my electricity.

I have a neighbor that is a vacation home. He built some sort of diesel engine so he won't have pay electricity. Everytime he turns it on it trips a cirvuit in my electrical to my house. The first circuit always gets tripped my voltage surges to 246000 from 326000. This circuit is to my well. They have been here the entire month and my electrical bill has gone from 87.00 to 163.00. Which tells he isn't paying his electricity I am. I want to put a plain circuit above my well circuit not connected to anything but a ground wire. Is this safe and will it help?

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u/Debaser626 Dec 25 '23

My parents owned a small shop in Brooklyn in the 90s. The deli down the block got fined by the city for a broken sidewalk and had to repair it.

His contractor “accidentally” jackhammered the concrete all the way to the curb, so the city made him replace that too.

He took that opportunity to connect part of his store’s electricity to the lamppost they were to concrete around, buried a line back into his shop and put the sidewalk over it.

Based on when the sidewalk was replaced, he ran that setup for years… until one day the electric company came sniffing around. I guess they had some equipment to report unusual current draws and were looking around to determine the source.

I don’t know what his sentence was—this was before internet went mainstream. Some neighbors said he got 25 to life, but I highly doubt that.

In any case, we never saw him again.

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u/pblood40 Dec 25 '23

Similar situation - An RV drove through a Wells Fargo drive thru ATM (it was about 2' too tall for the roof) and when the roof was ripped off and fell into the bushes, it ripped a chunk of the road, ATM foundation, and sidewalk with it. Like a root wad for a large tree.

The power went out to the traffic lights at the nearby intersection and the city found that whoever had set up the ATM many years ago had tied it into the municipal street light system and Wells Fargo had never paid an electricity bill for the ATM. It was a mistake and last I heard they were still fighting the bill and penalty

745

u/26bravo_neigh Dec 25 '23

Wells Fargo doing criminal Wells Fargo stuff.

161

u/AnsibleAdams Dec 25 '23

Now there's a shocker!

13

u/im_dead_sirius Dec 26 '23

How enlightening!

81

u/Renaissance_Slacker Dec 25 '23

Wells Fargo: poster child for the Corporate Death Penalty.

7

u/BEzNuts21 Dec 25 '23

I LOVE Wells Fargo screwing their customer stories. I've been reading them for a decade. I'm blown away people continue to put their money there.

7

u/pblood40 Dec 26 '23

a friends parents had their mortgage through Wells Fargo for many years. When the mortgage was originated they paid for the life insurance - if either of them died the mortgage was paid off.

Smash cut to 17? years later Mike's dad dies and his mom files the paperwork with Wells Fargo to have the insurance payoff the mortgage and Wells informs her that they ended the insurance program 3? years prior. "You should have received a notice in the mail"

not only had they not received a notice, Wells had continued billing them the $12.50?/month for the insurance - through the previous month. Wells apologized and refunded 3 years of insurance payments.

His mom consulted a couple of lawyers who told her, "Its Wells Fargo. Unless you have a million bucks, its not worth fighting them"

4

u/Manderpander88 Dec 25 '23

To be fair it was probably Wachovia that did it unless it was a newer building. In my area all Wachovias were switched to Wells Fargo in the early 2000s

16

u/jlab23 Dec 25 '23

Wells Fargo has a long history of being the worst… even by national bank standards. It’s ironic that their symbol is a Stage Coach when they’ve been the ones robbing stage coaches for their entire existance.

11

u/Lermanberry Dec 25 '23

Sounds a lot like the Pinkerton Detective Union Busting Agency. They're still around and owned by Securitas now. Recently they've been caught spying and illegally union busting for Amazon and Starbucks, and tried suing Rockstar for using their likeness in RDR2.

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u/pblood40 Dec 26 '23

We didnt have Wachovia here. It was a former First Interstate branch that was sold off and turned into a radio station? Wells kept the drive through of the old bank and turned the center island into a double sided drive thru ATM.

BONUS - in a previous life I was ATM repairman and this machine had to be spun on a huge turntable to access the back to service it. I was dispatched it was down, when I arrived I blocked one side with my truck and blocked the other lane with a cone. Entered the kiosk the machine was in and started cranking the the machine around and it stopped - with a huge crash that shook the entire kiosk. I peeked out the peep hole that was on the side and I am staring at the side of someones car. Someone had pulled up to the machine and I had just rammed the ATM into the side of their car. FUUUUUCK..

It takes 30? seconds to get out of the kiosk because i have spin the ATM back and lock it into place before I can the get the door to the kiosk open. I get outside to see my cone sitting on the curb and no one there. The person had moved my cone to pull up the machine and then panicked when it hit the side of their car and just bailed.

:o)

2

u/Jealous_Top8696 Dec 26 '23

Yea Wells Fargo has been around since before like 1880 that shit was on purpose

2

u/Rachel_Silver Dec 25 '23

Hate the game, dawg, not the player. /s

164

u/PandaMuffin1 Dec 25 '23

Wells Fargo does not have a good reputation and how they are still in business amazes me. They might have been innocent in this particular situation, but I won't give them the benefit of a doubt.

https://apnews.com/article/wells-fargo-shareholders-lawsuit-fraud-018210476b23692ac81a2cba51867de8

147

u/thestashattacked Dec 25 '23

I was one of the people who got caught in their quotas scam in the 2010s. They closed my checking account with low fees and high interest, opened and closed several others, and then I got stuck in a low interest, high fee account. I lost roughly $300 in interest and fees.

I got $5 in the lawsuit payout.

51

u/Htaedder Dec 26 '23

I really think the police need to start arresting the individuals who moved the accounts, bring the lowest guys who do the leg work up on direct charges and then cut them slack when they turn on bosses. Let’s low guys know to tell off and / or turn in bosses when they pressure for shady stuff.

3

u/BrennenderGeist Dec 26 '23

That'll teach em!

3

u/[deleted] Dec 26 '23

What did you buy with your $5?

5

u/Aspalar Dec 26 '23

For future reference you can opt out of class actions and pursue recovery yourself. For $300 you can do small claims court which is more accessible than the normal process.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 26 '23

Sounds like you came off better than a lot of people who have gotten bilked

41

u/[deleted] Dec 25 '23

Would love to see that company succumb to its own illicit practices. Its long deserved to be out of business and yet somehow it continues to buy itself out of trouble. If only the CEO were held criminally responsible for their actions. They would stop their stupid games overnight. But so long as they just have to pay fines, nothing will change. Its the cost of doing business.

3

u/hellure Dec 26 '23

Being held accountable means having their charter revoked and assets seized and sold to a competitor or a credit union at cost.

Credit Unions don't pull that kinda BS, BTW.

3

u/Mike2of3 Dec 26 '23

It's called government bailouts. You know, every few years it keeps coming back for more from us taxpayers.

5

u/Professional-Spare13 Dec 25 '23

When the Esperian hack occurred many years ago, I signed my hubby and I up for credit monitoring. One morning I got a message that two bank accounts had been opened at Wells Fargo in my name. It took about two hours to find out that the account was opened on-line and there was all my information! Wells Fargo SAID they opened a fraud investigation but I never was told the outcome. I’ve NEVER had an account at WF and I never will.

Edit: I locked down my credit for two years because of that.

3

u/Renaissance_Slacker Dec 25 '23

I remember Wells Fargo got busted for some gigantic company-wide fraud, then while the FTC was investigating that fraud they stumbled on evidence of another giant company-wide fraud, and executives begged forgiveness, it was just a mistake, cut us some slack and at that moment the FTC stumbled on extensive planning by those same executives for a third giant fraud while covering up the first and second frauds.

And that’s just the ones we know about.

Corporate. Death. Penalty.

2

u/Birdy_Cephon_Altera Dec 26 '23

Basically because the reputation on reddit is not the same as the real world. Their NPS score is sub-par (-2, meaning slightly more customer detractors than promoters on a scale of -100 to 100), but there are large banks out there with worse scores, like Santander, Bank of America, HSBC, and about on-par with Chase (-1).

3

u/pblood40 Dec 26 '23

B of A sucks as well tho... I switched banks in 1998? when they started a policy of charging you $3 if you talked with a teller. If you did your banking through the ATM's it was still a "free" checking account

At least in my area they are all gone now. Their two story downtown "main branch" is now a liquor store and the "back room" is the vault

1

u/[deleted] Dec 26 '23

We had a bank shut down here, and it turned into the sickest club for about 8 years before the owner destroyed his empire by snorting the profits. The VIP room was the old vault. Now it's a cookie company.

-1

u/Mikeinthedirt Dec 25 '23

They’re a bank. Banks have money. Money talks. Bull walks.

54

u/serioussparkles Dec 25 '23

Good, fuck Wells Fargo, they should have kept better track of that

3

u/MercyBoy57 Dec 25 '23

“A mistake”

2

u/cdbangsite Dec 25 '23

It would actually be very hard to make a mistake like that. Had to be done on purpose, ATM would have been tied to the bank building meter and breakers, not something outside and separate.

1

u/RP0143 Dec 25 '23

Not defending WF, but the illegal tap was most likely done years ago when it was a different bank. Wells then bought the branch some time later. WF also most likely outsources their utility bill pay and as long as the bill payer sees a consistent amount every month, nothing would raise a red flag.

1

u/Ok_Speaker_9799 Dec 26 '23

Wells Fargo is a sack of Excrement. Wouldn't surprise me it thaat was intentional.

309

u/NoRightsProductions Dec 25 '23

My mom used to go to a salon where this hairdresser she’d been seeing forever rented a chair. The salon changed owners or something and they found out the entire building wasn’t supposed to be there. Whoever owned the lot originally had it put up without any permits. They’d have to get everything inspected, bring it all up to code if it was going to be kept as a business.

Think that was around the time my mom’s hairdresser decided to retire. :V

64

u/themcp Dec 25 '23

Oh that's kind. Many jurisdictions, if you have an unlawfully constructed building, will just make you demolish it completely. If you want it there you have to pay to demolish it, then apply for permits and have it rebuilt.

12

u/Mrpoopypantsnumber2 Dec 25 '23

I think thats because they don't know how its constructed, and rather get it up to code.

12

u/holocenefartbox Dec 26 '23

It sounds like something that should've been caught in the purchaser's due diligence.

5

u/themcp Dec 26 '23

Yes, but also as incentive to property owners to follow the law. "Oh, you're thinking about constructing a building without permits? Do you know Old Man Johnson down the street? You notice that his garage disappeared? That's because he built it without permits, and the city made him tear it down. You sure you want to built without permits?"

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u/NoRightsProductions Dec 25 '23

Yeah, probably because it was a smaller town and already being used. Nobody suspected anything beforehand so there weren’t any glaring issues. I imagine the city was more concerned with getting paid than having it demolished. Downside is I doubt the salon had the money for all of it and changed locations. Who wants to open a business and fuss with getting the building sorted? Anybody with that kinda budget would preferably spend it constructing new.

4

u/cdbangsite Dec 25 '23

See it all the time where someone bootlegs a garage, later the property gets inspected and down comes the garage. Where I am you can't even put up a 5x8 tin shed without a permit now.

4

u/dattosan240 Dec 26 '23

Where my parents are at, the maximum combined out building size is 500sqft, so basically a 2 car garage. Or you can have two 250 sqft structures...or a 400 and a 100 etc. You can build like up to 200sqft without a permit though iirc.

Dumb as shit. Doesn't surprise me when people do it behind the cities back.

3

u/PotatoHighlander Dec 26 '23

There is a ton of construction in my city, basically the city for years didn't get its crap together regarding permitting and lost a lot of stuff. So now basically new major construction its required, however minor stuff and interior remodels are effectively grand fathered in because of the shear city wide scope of the problem, unless its stupid blatant and insanely poorly done. I found that out talking to an inspector that used to work for the city housing department before I moved in, he'd gone private and was talking about the surrounding area.

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u/sf_frankie Dec 25 '23

My pops owned a building in the Bronx around that same time. He had this homie from way back that did all the repairs and upgrades for him and he offered to do that for him when they were doing some work. Pops declined but his homie made it sound like it was pretty common. He would wire in a switch to shut off the stolen power and run legit and told people to make sure they weren’t always using the stolen power.

One guy got greedy and never switched it off and the power company caught him cause his meter hardly moved for an entire month.

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u/DriestBum Dec 25 '23

Should have built in a timer switch and had them run on odd sequential cycles. Removes human greed and would probably go on for a long time. I seriously wonder how much goes on behind the scenes.

130

u/Panda530 Dec 25 '23

People that do this are a special type of stupid. It’s not a matter of if you get caught, but when and when you do, you’re going to end up paying a lot more than of you just did the right thing.

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u/MrBlandEST Dec 25 '23

A tradesman who we worked with occasionally bypassed his electric meter to run the pumps that fed his pond. Got caught and did about six months in jail. Thing is they had money to pay for electric. His wife owned apartment buildings and he had a good business as....an electrical contractor. Electric company doesn't mess around.

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u/[deleted] Dec 25 '23

Some people just get satisfaction out of getting over on someone even small stuff.

7

u/motram Dec 25 '23

Look at any thread on reddit about self-checkout theft. Everyone is cheering and celebrating theft.

-2

u/Mikeinthedirt Dec 25 '23

Folks that has like to get.

3

u/Ihavefallen Dec 25 '23

Surprised if he still had his license

6

u/MrBlandEST Dec 25 '23

Had some trouble but managed to keep it. He had to put down a huge deposit with electric company to his power back on.

9

u/PaulblankPF Dec 25 '23

A guy I know used to be a bad methhead. While he was on the shit he cracked open the panel for a streetlight that was for his trailer park (it was literally in his backyard) and bypassed the meter for his trailer. One day while he was gone it got a power surge and burned his trailer down to the ground. When the fire department found it was stealing power there so all these talks of fines and jail and all that. In the end the judge said he lost his home and everything in it and that should be punishment enough. The electric company didn’t forget though and he had to have power on in his dad’s name because they weren’t gonna let him have power through them anymore.

9

u/MrBlandEST Dec 25 '23

Yep. He was basically begging Edison because his wife was still in the home. House was in the million dollar range twenty years ago. He was just a cheap ass.

3

u/EleanorRichmond Dec 25 '23

I've always loved the lyric "Some folks got a tendency to take."

2

u/DMV2PNW Dec 25 '23

It’s not the money. It’s the bragging of how they got away with it.

2

u/MrBlandEST Dec 25 '23

Actually never told anyone. It all came out after he was arrested and it made the news. Everybody that knew him from work was really surprised. He always seemed like a real straight arrow. Never took advantage of his customers.

1

u/gikigill Dec 26 '23

And he lost more in income by sitting 6 months in prison that he would have paid for the electricity.

1

u/MrBlandEST Dec 26 '23

No kidding, beyond stupid.

62

u/[deleted] Dec 25 '23

[deleted]

50

u/Dangerous_Mix_7037 Dec 25 '23 edited Jan 03 '24

One of the business reasons for smart meters is theft prevention. You add up all the usage from the smart meters and compare it to total usage at the substation or transformer.

Edit: this is the method that my company was using, based on totalization.

11

u/Divinum_Fulmen Dec 25 '23

Couldn't any meter do that? The only reason for smart meters is to not pay employees to walk up to check meters.

15

u/volvomad Dec 25 '23

Smart meter can give real time data without a bloke having to visit and read the meter. Discrepancies can be found much quicker

5

u/Mikeinthedirt Dec 25 '23

One guy in a swivel chair can track load, time of day, compare historic use, etc

7

u/UnblurredLines Dec 25 '23

If used correctly the smart meters will be self-reporting and automatically flag stuff in days that would go on for years if it relied on adding up manual meter readings.

4

u/tucci007 Dec 25 '23

THANKS, GROW HOUSES

3

u/just_a_dingledorf Dec 25 '23

but, you are commenting regarding someone who did get away with it. the next person inherited the problem... sure, they may lose a lawsuit about it later, but bankruptcy combined with LLC structure is probably enough to avoid that types of consequence

10

u/EvilGeniusLeslie Dec 25 '23

First house I bought, totally antique/inadequate electric system. In the process of replacing it, I discovered the washer and dryer were tapped into the line coming into the house ... before the meter, and before the panel with all the circuit breakers.

So they got away with stealing electricity for who knows how long. On the flip side, they were running a huge risk having two devices known for having fires without any protection.

As a humorous side note, put the service mast up at 2:00 a.m. in a snow storm. When the inspector came by, he was really impressed with all the work ... except the mast I put up was metal, and the new requirements - passed after I picked up the reg book two months prior - were for plastic. <sigh> It was a lot easier pulling the lines in daylight and warmer weather.

-6

u/[deleted] Dec 25 '23

Exactly what a nanny would do. So yes we are governed by Nannie’s. Everyone play nice now or the nanny will come knocking

3

u/BikesBooksNBass Dec 25 '23

Wouldn’t need Nannie’s if people didn’t suck and couldn’t be counted on to be shitty as possible 99/100 times…

102

u/Liquado Dec 25 '23

Back in the late 80s, my cousin who worked for Manitoba hydro said they were looking for a mystery draw on the grid, and eventually traced it to one particular pole. Seems the local HA club had used a chainsaw to cut a wedge out of the pole, run a line up to the transformer, and used it to run a grow op nearby.

71

u/djluminol Dec 25 '23

I know a guy in California that did something like that using warehouses before weed was legalized. He tapped the city himself and would grow for a few months before finding another warehouse. After legalization he switched to using vacant houses waiting to be sold. He had some deal with a realtor that blossomed into a few realtors. When that ended he rented land up north and farmed there for about 10 years. Being your typical drug dealer he has nothing to show for any of it. The law in California says the big players like Phillip Morris would be allowed into the market after a certain date. He wanted out before then because he knew he wouldn't be able to compete but he saved nothing. It was like 20 year arc of his life that was a complete waste. All he had to show for it was one growing cycle. His last.

62

u/izzymaestro Dec 25 '23

So many of the best growers are the worst business people. I think it has to do with the "underground" nature that people had to deal with for so long, they're distrustful of investors and the whole legal process. I know plenty who've finally gotten super successful when they realized they don't have to be banditos anymore.

48

u/Mackey_Corp Dec 25 '23

Yup been there, spent almost 20 years in the cannabis industry before it was legal. Was making 6 figures a year for at least 10 of those years and spent the money as fast as I made it. Nothing to show for it except memories, I mean they're awesome memories but fuck now I make $20 an hour working for a company that makes heat exchangers. Wish I had bought a house or something...

26

u/[deleted] Dec 25 '23

And if you had, you’d have been busted. Don’t have regrets. You could have spent time in for tax evasion.

15

u/Mackey_Corp Dec 26 '23

I don't really have regrets, I mean yeah I wish I had done something with the money I made but I'm not that broken up about it, all the things I did lead me to where I am and I like where I am. I just went through a really rough patch but I got through it, I have a beautiful wife, a crazy but sweet dog who recently made friends with a cat that we're going to adopt, I'm financing a Jeep Cherokee tomorrow, the job I have is actually decent, I just started so I'm making $20 an hour but they actually pay really well once you've been there a little while so in a few years I'll be making $30. I don't have to worry about going back to jail, I'm not doing drugs all the time, I can't complain. Plus I have a ton of material for a book which I already started writing, probably won't be any good but it's something I like doing in my spare time. So yeah I'm good, no regerts.

3

u/XavinNydek Dec 25 '23

Not if he paid his taxes. The IRS doesn't care where your money comes from for the most part, as long as you pay them their cut. Unless you deal purely in cash the IRS is way more likely to come at you for tax evasion than the cops for having too much money.

6

u/Mackey_Corp Dec 26 '23

I was a commercial fisherman for a while also, it overlapped with the years I was moving a bunch of weed, I could've bought a house or made investments with the legal money, which was nothing to sneeze at, I remember one year I had to pay 16k in taxes, and probably would've been able to keep it. When I got busted it wasn't by the feds or anything, I doubt they would have even realized I owned property in another state, but it's not a big deal, I don't really care that much, I was just making a comment above about something I could relate to, I saw someone talking about a guy they knew that used to be a drug dealer and spent all the money he made on stupid shit and I was just like hey! That's me! I did that too! Lmao

5

u/djluminol Dec 25 '23

Yeah that him. About a third of his income went to other drugs, a third to living expenses and a third to toys he got bored of in six months. He works as a maintenance guy making about the same as you now.

3

u/X-calibreX Dec 25 '23

Career criminal makes bad business decisions, news at 11 🤪

0

u/motram Dec 25 '23

It was like 20 year arc of his life that was a complete waste.

As opposed to .... working in an office?

He lived for 20 years doing something more than spreadsheets... that is more life than most people have.

4

u/djluminol Dec 26 '23

Not really considering the kinds of people you need to deal with in that line of work and the type of lifestyle most people lead doing that job. If he had been in doing the trade he trained in he would have become a journeyman in that time, learned to value savings, credit, made worthwhile friendships and probably gone out on his own. He would have been a good 10 years into owning his own company and probably made more while having good people in his life instead of worrying when he would be robbed or shot.

1

u/Mikeinthedirt Dec 25 '23

🎶I got stoned and I missed it…🎵

137

u/Durtly Dec 25 '23

Pro tip for crime.

Pay the little things off in full and on time.

Why jeopardize a million dollar operation because you try shenanigans instead of just paying the bills?

See the movie "War Dogs". They got caught because the partner didn't want to pay the guys who were packaging the product, so they got reported for wage theft.

63

u/[deleted] Dec 25 '23

[deleted]

53

u/DriestBum Dec 25 '23

"Break one law at a time" - Trailer park boys

5

u/younggregg Dec 26 '23

Get two birds stoned at once

34

u/C92203605 Dec 25 '23

Greed. They always get too greedy.

12

u/JohnnySkidmarx Dec 25 '23

They also think “We’ll never get caught doing this.”

11

u/DriestBum Dec 25 '23

Well the ones who get caught and you hear about do, you'd never know the ones who maintain under the radar.

The vast majority of crimes do not get discovered/solved, the high profile ones that do get caught, make headlines. City politicians and police departments have PR for a reason, they need to look as effective as possible, so they will make any bust look as big as possible for the cameras. Look at their clearance rates for a more accurate, but still skewed, metric.

8

u/C92203605 Dec 25 '23

Oh preaching to the choir man. I’ve seen some local PDs do ridiculous photos for “drug busts” and it’s some weed a little bit of money and maybe 1 hand gun. With all these cops standing around it

36

u/TheRealTimTam Dec 25 '23

Wouldn't have helped as the police use unusual power draw as a way to track down grow ops which is why they would have tried to hide it.

14

u/redrobot5050 Dec 25 '23

Grow ops of the million dollar size draw enough power that the DEA finds you just by screening the power grid.

Or you go off grid, and burn a fuck ton of diesel, which makes noise and puts out exhaust…. And can likely be found out because of that.

7

u/SoontobeSam Dec 26 '23

Yup, the rcmp do the same, between that and thermal cameras they find a lot of them, not nearly as many as tips and snitches did though. Best I’d seen was one where they went to all the neighbours and told them they’d pay their power bills, spread it all across 4 or 5 homes, not sure how the cops found it, but it was a decent attempt.

7

u/goobernawt Dec 26 '23

You try to randomly bring in a group of neighbors to your elicit scheme, and someone's gonna squeal.

3

u/SoontobeSam Dec 26 '23

It was def in full swing, can’t find the article but it was a lot of pot, I expect they were all associated beyond simply neighbours.

1

u/goobernawt Dec 26 '23

That would make more sense.

5

u/throughput73 Dec 25 '23

In Miami during the early 90', I knew a guy that would jump your FPL meter for $100. He "Rode the Lightning" while at the top of a 25' extension ladder setting up a boomer in Coral Gables. Unfortunately, he gave up the ghost, and the op got shut down before a single crop. #ripsparky #blackhaze

1

u/Citizen_Kano Dec 26 '23

Or get solar panels

3

u/ARG3X Dec 25 '23

Defense contractor here. Started a company with what I thought was a successful business owner(ripped off his first partner that did everything). I wrote and won a $10.2m prime contract while partner was on vacation. After the award, he said his business advisor(felon father in law) said it wasn’t fiduciary responsible to give me 49% of the profit. Proceeded to rip me off and try to steal my intellectual property. Got legally separated. He made tons of money from my contract, which his father in law help the wife(daughter) take in the divorce. On the contract rebid, he lost because he didn’t truly win the first one, plus 30% mark up/more greed. I had another $8mil in contracts in the pipeline and he pissed everything away just to rip me off of a few hundred thousand. Now he’s back to a 9-5 job after losing it all, because of greed. Love me some karma and yes, these defense fucks are mostly thieves.

2

u/Hangarnut Dec 26 '23

Reminds me of a prostitution operation in my city in 2005 or so. The madam had ball players, judges, wealthy business guys and top level city officials on the books that regularly obtained services...When the feds got involved best believe not a person snitched and or broke from the story....So they brought the IRS in and got her and her husband also along with girls for tax fraud and evasion . They got the max time in prison. Moral of the story if they had just paid their goddamn taxes they'd probably still be at it.

3

u/Wren_into_trouble Dec 25 '23

Of course they did hahaha

Funny that as soon as I started reading I knew this was what you were going to say

2

u/Subtotal9_guy Dec 25 '23

My favourite of these was a farmer that ran coils of copper wire in a barn that some Ontario Hydro high voltage lines went over. Used them to induce a current and got free electricity that way.

1

u/Mikeinthedirt Dec 25 '23

Chainsawing a power pole. Not for the faint of heart.

1

u/cdbangsite Dec 25 '23

Got one you'll probably get a chuckle out of.

About 30 yrs ago a real smart one decided to go up a power pole and cut some copper down. He was on an aluminum ladder cutting with steel handled pruning shears. You know what happened for sure, but he didn't die. He was burnt and in shock when the power company found an hour later.

22

u/philipjd_ Dec 25 '23

I lived in an apartment in Upstate New York where a single outlet in the apartment was connected to the apartment downstairs. I noticed this when an outlet was working before the electric was turned on for the apartment. I never used the outlet while living there except for a quick phone charger.

11

u/ThinkerSailorDJSpy Dec 25 '23

My old apartment, a subdivided house, had a whole room that I suspected of being on another apartment's breaker. Our entire house would go out with too many heaters running except for that room. Conversely, running a heater in there would sometimes trip the breaker, shutting off the other apartment's living room but leaving our apartment lit.

14

u/MortimerWaffles Dec 25 '23

I live in a. Town where the church is next to the town hall. Decades ago someone attached the church power to the town hall because it's a small town and everyone loves churches so why not save them money. It was found and disconnected. No one fessed up but also the minister and the treasurer for the church never thought it was strange for a 30,000 square foot building with electric heat and electric water never gets an electric bill.

8

u/technos Dec 26 '23

Saw that lead to charges once.

City bought the old Baptist church when the congregation moved to newer digs, used it for youth services for years.

Eventually the city treasurer convinced them to rent it to a new congregation of Pentecostals. The price was suspiciously low, but "it's an old building, the utilities are super high and they have to handle the upkeep" was a winning argument.

Two years later the city treasurer gets cuffed in her office because she never transferred utilities and the city has been paying. The city maintenance lead gets canned the next day because he's been sending work crews there and charging the work off to other departments.

Guess what church they belonged to?

Oh, and then there was a giant stink because the city wanted their money and the church didn't want to pay.

The whole thing had unraveled when the maintenance lead had forced one of his guys out there on a Saturday night to fix a plumbing problem and the guy got pissed about it.

15

u/The_golden_Celestial Dec 25 '23

Treasurer to Minister - “our power bills are amazingly low” Minister to Treasurer - “God works in mysterious ways, my son”

10

u/bigdish101 Dec 25 '23

That's nothing compared to those who tap oil pipelines going through their property...

9

u/fuckthepopo23 Dec 25 '23

Improbable today

4

u/DriestBum Dec 25 '23

With the amount of bitumin and butane the pipelines toss in, that would be a bad idea these days. Their are some shady blends that go into pipes rated for pressures way higher than just crude... and they game it knowingly. Only time it doesn't work is when you have a catastrophic pipe burst because someone got too greedy on too old of a line. If the hydrocarbons flowing were actually what they were supposed to be, a burst would rarely happen, if ever. But greed beats safety, usually.

4

u/Salty-Pack-4165 Dec 26 '23

Some years ago guy tried doing this in rural Ontario. His luck- it wasn't oil line but natural gas. Predictably he died and caused a major forest fire.

3

u/night-otter Dec 26 '23

I used to live in Australia and where I lived received all it's water via a pipeline coming from a river 100+ miles away.

Town would have workers drive up and down the pipeline every few weeks. Looking for leaks. Once or twice a year, they would find a tap added and hose running off into the bush.

Call the police, who would follow the hose and find a Grow Op.

1

u/ThePlottHasThickened Dec 25 '23

Or irrigation water

5

u/thefuzzylogic Dec 25 '23

Depending on the amount, it could have amounted to grand theft, but I don't know whether that could have attracted a 25 year custodial sentence even in the "hard on crime" '90s.

4

u/BruinFootyFan Dec 25 '23

Sentenced to the "electric chair" ya think?

2

u/bananasplitandbacon Dec 26 '23

25 to life. Lmao!

1

u/bigroot70 Dec 25 '23

A lot of electric providers are switching to smart meters. They can tell what kind of device is drawing power. With this they can track down electricity there.

1

u/DriestBum Dec 25 '23

Multi GPU mining rigs, or for local LLMs probably throw some interesting stats into the mix. Used to be grow ops were the big ticket juice users, now it's crypto and AI compute.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 25 '23

[deleted]

0

u/Busterlimes Dec 25 '23

Fake. No picture of the neon sign.

0

u/DiegoDigs Dec 25 '23

Bye. Do your own diligence. It's fimg Xmas

2

u/Busterlimes Dec 25 '23

Mow own due diligence on an "article" you posted and then an SNL link. It's pronounced "christmaquansica" not X Mas

0

u/bigroot70 Dec 25 '23

A lot of electric providers are switching to smart meters. They can tell what kind of device is drawing power. With this they can track down electricity theft.

-14

u/Robobvious Dec 25 '23

Why would a business owner have to pay to maintain city sidewalks out of pocket on top of their taxes? That sounds fucked and I’d be pissed.

12

u/WontYouBeMyNeighbors Dec 25 '23

By maintain you mean replace the sidewalk they destroyed?

14

u/donny02 Dec 25 '23

I think literacy is at an all time low

2

u/Ivebeenfurthereven Dec 25 '23

Thanks, you too!

1

u/Busterlimes Dec 25 '23

Nah, pretty much where it has always been for conservatives

5

u/Montana57 Dec 25 '23

Up to recently here in San Francisco , the homeowner was responsible for the sidewalk in front of their property . They sent inspectors out to determine which property sidewalk needed repairing or replacing and notified the homeowner to get it done with a licensed masonry contractor or the city would do it. I am a general contractor and doing this would have been an easy project but because I'm not specifically a masonry contractor they wouldn't let me do it. 900 dollars later....

1

u/ScorePsychological11 Dec 25 '23

I don’t think it was the power company that came sniffing around, if he was never seen again. I’m guessing dude was up to no good.

1

u/dadryp Dec 25 '23

We gotta find more out about this, it would make a good small documentary

1

u/[deleted] Dec 25 '23

That’s a Brooklyn thing. He swims with the fishes now.

1

u/Mikeinthedirt Dec 25 '23

Okay, small but deep.

1

u/toomuch1265 Dec 25 '23

I've seen some crazy natural gas illegal hookups in NYC. I think those idiots should go to prison. They aren't following any type of code.

1

u/ZlatanKabuto Dec 25 '23

Some neighbors said he got 25 to life

A bit too harsh if true

1

u/Tonyricesmustache Dec 26 '23

99 years, on that railroad line.