By JON BRADY and ISAAC CROWSON
Fuel stations are being robbed of tens of thousands of pounds worth of petrol and diesel by both organised crime gangs and ordinary punters in a wave of lawlessness on forecourts across the UK.
Petrol station boss Sutha Selvarajah told MailOnline that his business is being 'plagued' by drivers 'forgetting' their card or cash and leaving a driving licence or passport behind as a guarantee to return with money.
He has a collection of driving licences, passports and Inland Revenue identity cards which punters have left with him - never to return - and it's often revealed the documents are fake or stolen, leaving Mr Selvarajah out of pocket.
Thefts from his petrol station in Palmarsh Gulf Service Station in Hythe, Kent, have cost him £10,000 in the last three years and he is convinced the 'sophisticated' scam is the work of organised crime gangs.
The 50-year-old said the 'crippling' problem is only getting worse and believes Kent Police have 'given up' trying to tackle the problem.
In addition his business is plagued by 'bilking' or 'drive-offs' where opportunistic motorists fill up and drive away without paying.
Recently, Mr Selvarajah released CCTV footage of a motorist filling up £120 of fuel and then driving off but he is not bothering to report it to the police, believing 'nothing will be done'.
'It's a scandal. A new trick is they come in, say they're really sorry but they've forgotten their card, but say they will leave their driving licence or ID and come back,' he explained.
Petrol station boss Sutha Selvarajah said his business is being 'plagued' by drivers filling up and fleeing - or claiming they can't pay and leaving ID behind as a guarantee
One of the driving licences left behind by a driver, which Mr Selvarajah believes is either fake or stolen
Mr Selvarajah, owner of the garage, says he was not going to report the man to police because he did not think it would come to anything
'They fill up, always a big amount, like a full tank. They drive off and I never see them again.
'I am aware of it now but I was not before. People need to be aware of this.
'I've got a stash of identity cards. It's mad really. It's plaguing my business.
'I've been here three years and it's cost me about £10,000 in lost revenue.
'We've been telling the police about it. I have told them I have around ten identity cards.
'One of them even had an address in west Yorkshire.
'That's about 500 miles away. It's organised crime. It's become much more sophisticated than just filling up and not paying.'
That crime - often referred to as bilking, or a drive-off - is still also happening several times a week.
A selection of the fake IDs left behind as a guarantee of future payment before the owners became wise to the scam
Owner Sutha Selvarajah said that he spots the same people turning up to steal petrol but driving different cars
He added: 'I have CCTV, I have reported it to the police but they do not take it seriously. Now I do not bother. There's no outcome.
'Quite often we are spotting the same people, but in different cars. It's very annoying. I work so hard.
'I get here at 5am and often do not leave until 9pm. I love my job. I would never want to do anything else.
'But being targeted so often is really very upsetting.
'It's the first garage I have ever operated. I have a lease. The vast majority of the customers are brilliant. Most people are so friendly. The local customers especially are fantastic.
'But there are more and more thieves. I know it's not just me. Others are impacted as well.'
He did not think a system where customers have to pay upfront before filling up would work.
He added: 'I think that would make people very cross. It would cause a lot of upset. I cannot see the customer agreeing to that. They'd go elsewhere.
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'Then there would be real trouble.'
It's hard to tell when someone is planning to steal petrol - until they leap back in their car and disappear in a matter of seconds.
A video from Mablethorpe's Empire Garage shows just how quickly it can happen as a man in shorts and a t-shirt leaps out of his red hybrid MG and nonchalantly fills up the tank, casually leaning on one leg as he does so.
As another car pulls up, he acknowledges the driver, rapidly screwing the filler cap on his car and closing the flap - before hastily replacing the nozzle and jumping straight into his car. Just like that, he's gone.
Incidents like this were happening twice a day at the garage - but police, too stretched to do anything about it, would tell owners Kavita and Sanjay Pilani to pursue it through civil means.
Some of those driving off, Lincolnshire Police said, were not thieves, but people who were 'forgetting to pay for fuel' and were maybe not 'having a great day'.
That doesn't help the Pilanis, who said last year they would be left as much as £90 down every time someone drove off without paying.
The garage is now switching to US-style prepayment, where customers decide in advance how much they want to spend and pay for it inside before filling up.
Time and again, garage owners are watching helplessly as their livelihoods are literally being drained away by criminals who use cloned plates and dishonest motorists who fill up knowing full well they don't intend to pay.
An alleged 'bilker' stands nonchalantly as he fills up his car - in a few seconds he'll hop back into his car without paying
As another car approaches, he replaces the nozzle and immediately gets into his car and takes off without paying
It's a predicament facing every petrol station in the country amid a huge rise in fuel theft - also known as 'bilking' or 'pump and dash' theft.
Some 131,000 drive-off incidents were reported to police between 2020 and 2024, costing forecourts some £6.55million.
And a total of 66,378 requests for driver details were submitted to the DVLA between February and April this year after crooks drove off - up 49 per cent from the same period in 2024.
This not only suggests fuel theft is on the rise, but that forecourts are giving up on expecting the police to do anything about it and instead resorting to civil action.
Forecourt theft has a reputation as a 'victimless' crime among motorists who think they're getting one over the big oil firms.
But Gordon Balmer, the PRA's executive director, says this ignores the fact that many petrol stations are family businesses.
He told MailOnline sister site This Is Money in May: 'This is not a victimless crime. Many of our members run family businesses that are suffering huge losses through the Government's failure to enforce these crimes.
'If the authorities do not want to enforce the law, they should come out and say it.
'It would save our members the time and energy it takes to report crimes, only for no action to be taken.'
Werrington Service Station in Peterborough has shared several videos of alleged fuel thieves filling up with impunity before driving off
The number plate for this black Seat Leon actually belongs to a grey Mercedes-Benz, suggesting it has been stolen or cloned
On average, drivers are nicking £50 of fuel each time, according to industry magazine Forecourt Trader, which obtained the figures via Freedom of Information laws.
That isn't enough to even brim the tank in an average family hatchback.
Thieves are thought to steal such a low amount - below the £200 'low-value' threshold applied to shoplifting offences - on the assumption that forecourts will not bother pursuing them for the amount.
Driving away without paying for petrol is known as making off without payment, and is an offence under the Theft Act, for which offenders can be sentenced to 12 months imprisonment at magistrates level and two years at Crown level.
But the scale of the problem is not truly known - as many forecourt owners have given up on reporting thefts to overstretched police forces that do not have the time or resources to pursue scores of thefts for relatively small amounts of money.
Across police forces, as many as 95 per cent of drive-off fuel theft end with no suspect identified - leaving forecourts out of pocket and the thief free to strike again.
Nevertheless, the problem is costing garages - many of them family-run - millions of pounds every year.
Outside of reporting the incident to the police, garage owners can request a driver's details from the DVLA by providing the body with a number plate.
But that can be stymied if crooks use cloned or fake number plates to reduce the chances of being traced.
A video shared on Facebook in April showed a driver of a black Seat Leon filling up with diesel before making a clumsy escape as the car rolls backwards. He then takes off and disappears in seconds.
Social media users noted that the car had a number plate clearly visible in the footage, which was captured in broad daylight.
But unless police can identify the driver, he'll likely get off scot-free - as a DVLA database states the number plate on his car belongs not to a black Seat, but to a grey Mercedes-Benz.
Another incident of fuel theft the garage shared earlier this month was the same: a white Kia SUV was running with plates belonging to a blue Nissan hatchback; another, last October, involved a black BMW on a silver Peugeot's plates.
Around 13 per cent of drive-offs involve cloned number plates, according to forecourt security firm Vars Technology, which operates automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems to log the plates of fuel thieves.
The Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), a body representing around two thirds of Britain's petrol stations, says thieves are using ever more sophisticated tactics.
These include 'double tanking', where thieves either fill up multiple jerry cans or a secondary fuel tank hidden in their car so they can steal hundreds of pounds of petrol at a time.
In return, petrol stations are employing new high-tech tactics - including ANPR-based systems that can lock off fuel pumps if a repeat offender drives up.
Criminals may circumvent that with a fresh set of cloned plates, however.
Petrol stations are also thought to be resistant to installing pay-at-pump machines - as that would deprive them of vital income from the retail side. US-style prepayment inside the shop may be the answer.
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And there's no getting around that prepayment pumps and ANPR systems are huge investments that not every business can afford.
Steve Gooding, director of transport policy body the RAC Foundation, suspects that criminals are taking advantage of the climate - and that forces are too overwhelmed to investigate.
'Repeat criminals might well be pushing their luck more than ever because they believe other pressures on the police are such that they'll get away with it,' he said last month.
'Drive-offs might be seen as relatively low-level crimes in the grand scheme of things but they are corrosive to society, damaging to businesses and ultimately push up pump prices for law-abiding motorists and riders.
'More is being done to prevent these crimes through adoption of better surveillance systems and pay-at-pump options, but the numbers suggest the problem has been getting worse.'
The National Police Chiefs Council said in May that many petrol theft cases are discontinued due to a lack of intelligence or data.
A spokesperson told Forecourt Trader: 'In some cases, there may not be enough intelligence or data for police to act on.
'This does not mean that a crime is closed indefinitely or that intelligence or information is ignored.
'Intelligence is vital in detecting organised criminality, and we would encourage anyone who suspects criminality in their community to report it to police, including theft.'
It's not to say that crooks are never caught - but they are not caught often enough.
In May, repeat fuel thief James Dunn was jailed for 16 months for committing a spate of fuel thefts last summer that saw him fill up large containers in his car boot at forecourts across Kent before speeding off without paying.
Officers recognised him in October and engaged in a pursuit that ended with him crashing into a lamppost, KentOnline reported.
Kent Police's DI Tristan Stevens said of the thefts: 'The theft of fuel often directly impacts the livelihoods of individuals and small businesses and losses generally result in increased costs for law-abiding consumers.
'Dunn's greed and contempt for the law have now rightly earned him a prison sentence.'
Prolific fuel thief James Dunn was jailed for 16 months in May after committing a spate of petrol station pump-and-dashes
But it isn't drive-offs that are costing petrol stations the most money. People are also depriving garage owners of income to their faces - by filling up and then claiming they cannot pay that day.
Around two thirds of cases now revolve around 'no means of payment' (NMoP): when a driver confesses to garage staff that they haven't got enough money to pay for the petrol they now have, or have forgotten their wallets.
In this case, forecourts will ask drivers to fill out a form with their details and make arrangements for them to return and pay for the fuel at a later date.
In some cases, this might be genuine - particularly in light of the cost of living crisis and explosion in fuel prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as people live paycheque to paycheque.
But this is also being exploited by people who use the goodwill of garage owners against them - particularly if they then don't come back to pay.
Bruce Nichol, director of forecourt security body the British Oil Security Syndicate (BOSS), said motorists were using NMoPs as a 'seven-day loan'.
But some may also be using it as a means of turning what could be a criminal theft into a civil matter that police won't touch.
Instead, it is passed onto debt collection agencies to chase up - even if the motorist had no intention of paying anyway, which is a criminal offence.
Speaking at the Forecourt Trader Summit in March last year, he said: 'What we are unclear of is: are the current prolific offenders more aware that the drive-off side is criminal... and have they then resorted to no means of payment because it is civil?'
There may be some hope on the horizon for embattled forecourt operators. The Policing and Crime Bill winding its way through Parliament will scrap the 'low-level' £200 threshold for shoplifting offences.
While not the same as bilking, the Government says the removal of this cut-off will shatter the 'perceived immunity' associated with low-level theft. Whether that leads to the conviction rate for petrol theft rising beyond five per cent is another matter.
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