Recently exposed by mainland media, a gas station has been caught using cheating software to steal fuel by 2% to 5%. Fuel pump cheating is not uncommon in China. Earlier this year, 95 cases of fuel pump cheating were discovered nationwide, with some cheating software being marketed in over 20 provinces and cities.
According to the report on November 19 by Chinese media, the market supervision authorities conducted a surprise inspection at a gas station. On-site evidence showed signs of the gas pump control board being tampered with. Inside, there were two computers with identical interfaces – one showing that the gas station had secretly installed cheating software with fuel theft function, allowing for parameters to be set at will to control the percentage of fuel theft.
In order to avoid consumers’ suspicion, the fuel theft amount is usually set around 2% to 5%, meaning that if a consumer fills a 60-liter tank, the gas station would shortchange at least 1.2 liters of fuel.
This cheating software not only steals fuel but also evades taxes. During an inspection, a paper statement handed over by a gas station to law enforcement showed monthly revenue in the hundreds of thousands, with July’s sales reported at 770,000 yuan. However, on a USB drive discovered by inspectors was another set of encrypted accounts written by the gas station, indicating July sales of 8.5 million yuan, revealing a discrepancy of nearly 8 million yuan that the gas station had concealed.
Technical expert Wang Mingxin explained that computer cheating is very covert. When the cheating software is not active, the gas pump operates normally. Once the cheating software is activated, the cheating function can be freely adjusted by gas station operators. “If discovered, pressing the ‘T’ key on the keyboard will restore all the gas pumps to normal without leaving any trace.”
Fuel pump cheating cases in China are not uncommon. A video posted by blogger “Captain Evaluation” on November 5 showed that when filling up for 68 yuan at a gas station in Zhoukou, Henan, the expected amount should have been 10.03 liters, but a professional measurement tool revealed a shortage of 400 milliliters.
In May of this year, developers and sellers of cheating software called “Le Oil” were arrested. This software had been sold in over 21 provinces and cities, such as Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan, Guangxi, and Chongqing.
Earlier in January, a cheating gas pump control board discovered in Inner Mongolia showed that the control system, which should have had a self-locking function, was manually tampered with, resulting in the highest margin of error in 15 gas pumps at 1.23%, more than 4 times the national standard limit. At that time, there were 95 cases of fuel pump cheating reported nationwide.
In a case uncovered by the market supervision authorities in Chongqing, it was found that by swapping out measurement chips, the error margin, which should have been within ±0.3%, was manipulated artificially to 20%. This means that when buying 100 liters of fuel, consumers would, in reality, only receive 80 liters.