Cheap gas was too good to be true

RALEIGH -- In the absence of any real gas bargains at the pump, police believe motorists flocked to the sales pitch of a 27-year-old Raleigh man now in the Wake County Jail.

Raleigh police have charged Dillard Roe Johnson of 507 Dacian Drive with peddling cheap fill-ups at area stations with gas cards stolen from an engineering and surveying firm.

More than 300 people took advantage of the illicit gas business Sunday, according to officials at Bass, Nixon & Kennedy Inc. in West Raleigh, where the cards were stolen. Police say Johnson used the stolen cards to fill up folks' vehicles for $20 a pop.

Ed Davenport, the president of Bass, Nixon & Kennedy, said the thief took the cards to more than two dozen gas stations in Raleigh, Smithfield, Morrisville and Youngsville, with gas purchases credited to the cards ranging from $5 to $400.

"By Monday morning $23,000 worth of gas had been charged on the cards," Davenport said.

Scott Wilson, the firm's survey manager, said the thief "would stay at some stations for more than an hour, moving from pump to pump."

Officials at the business learned of the break-ins Sunday morning when an employee came to work and found a window had been broken out of a small white pickup truck used by the company as a courier vehicle, Wilson said. On Monday, employees discovered that someone had broken into two surveying trucks also, Wilson said.

Wilson said he isn't sure how someone gained the cards' PIN numbers. But at some gas station chains, a PIN isn't required to purchase gas at the pumps.

The spree took place just three days before the American Automobile Association announced that North Carolina's gas customers pay an average 31 cents more a gallon than the rest of the nation, excluding Hawaii and Alaska.

Raleigh motorists who pulled into select stores over the weekend must have thought it was their lucky day.

Investigators have not yet disclosed how many people obtained gas through the stolen gas cards. But police spokesman Jim Sughrue said charges could be filed against anyone investigators are able to identify when they review convenience stores' surveillance cameras.

Wilson said detectives told him they will try to identify the customers by looking at vehicle license plates.

"The charges all depend on what [the gas buyers] knew at the time," Sughrue said. "It will be handled on a case-by-case basis. If it can be established that they knew the cards were stolen, then they could be charged with obtaining property by false pretenses."

Johnson was taken into custody Tuesday when police charged him with two felony counts of financial card theft, six counts of breaking and entering into a motor vehicle and two misdemeanor counts of larceny, according to the City-County Bureau of Identification.

Police filed those charges in connection with the July 13 vehicle break-ins and larcenies at B.E.S.T. Inc. and Mammoth Grading, both at 1108 Nowell Road, Sughrue said. Police accused Johnson of smashing vehicles' windows and grabbing whatever was available, including gas and credit cards.

Police searched a home on Beaverwood Drive on Tuesday after Johnson's arrest. They seized $1,900 in cash, about 30 grams of marijuana, gloves, clothing and two fuel cards, court records show.

Johnson was being held in lieu of $85,000 bail; he faces nine felony counts of financial card fraud, three felony counts of breaking and entering into a motor vehicle and one count of financial card theft.

At Bass, Nixon & Kennedy, Inc. both Davenport and Wilson said people who filled up using their company's cards should start looking over their shoulder for the police.

"Twenty dollars to fill up?" Wilson said. "These people had to know that was wrong. Some of them had probably just come home from church."