A Nebraska woman allegedly found a lucrative quirk at a gas station pump — double-swipe the rewards card and get free gas!
Unfortunately for her, you can’t do that, prosecutors said. The 45-year-old woman was arrested March 6 and faces felony theft charges accusing her of a crime that cost the gas station nearly $28,000.
Prosecutors say the woman exploited the system over a period of several months. Police learned of the problem in October when the loss-prevention manager at Bosselman Enterprises reported that the company’s Pump & Pantry in Lincoln had been scammed.
Please put me on that jury so I can vote not guilty.
“Stealing” from the ruling class is always okay because it’s not stealing, it’s reclamation.
How are gas station owners ruling class
Gas station owners in the US don’t own the gas. Their prices are set by a regulatory board and gas stations don’t make profit. They make their profits from the attached convenience store.
If you steal gas, you’re stealing it from oil companies.
I don’t think there is a single accurate thing you’ve said in your post. You literally just made up facts to fit your conclusion. You act like you’ve never seen two gas stations across the street from each other with different prices.
They don’t make much profit off gas, but they do own it. They pay several thousand dollars when the truck comes to fill up the tanks, and they make that money back when they sell it. I’ve never heard of gas on consignment, or whatever you are talking about
That explains the felony charges
there’s a very good chance that if you own a gas station that you are part of a very small percentage of wealth in your community. it may not be equal to the 1% of the global population, but the result is the same - you profit from the distribution of a product that is almost completely necessary for the working class to function.
When I was a kid, I used a vending machine that had a busted coin return button; it counted the coins I put in, but also spat them back out, so I got some free snacks.
Come and get me, cops.
There was a vending machine at my university that glitched out one day and spat out the whole stock of sunchips. Told my friends and they ran to the machine and came back with backpacks full of snacks. It was awesome.
lots of people could still be doing this if this lady hadn’t been such an entrepeneur about it. If you ever discover something like this don’t tell anyone about and don’t abuse it too much; plausible deniability is far better a shield than a small pile of money - saying “oh I didnt realize” is far easier if you don’t set up some kind of pyramid scheme around it.
Gas Pumps are calibrated for the flow that comes from fully opening the valve by pressing handle all the way down.
Do with that information what you will.
Whether you pump gas fast or slow does not impact the measurement/amount of fuel being delivered and/or the cost. If you pump 10 gallons fast or slow, you should get 10 gallons of gas and be charged for the amount. Fuel is metered at the pump without any aeration.
I got a variance of roughly 0.5kg when pumping two containers of 15 liters each. I know their weight is less than 0.1kg apart when empty.
One filled normal. The other one with the handle half squeezed.
Not going to say every gas-station has the same technology. Just telling you my actual experience when trying.
Ok I’m just a moron. I can’t quite figure this one out.
It’s false.
$28,000 of gas in a few months? Yeah no shit. Find something like this and keep it to personal use if you must. Probably could’ve kept it under the radar or an amount small enough to settle without criminal charges if caught.
Yeah no shit. Find something like this and keep it to personal use if you must
Nah.
Figure out how it works, don’t use personal card, get a new one (getting a rewards card to someone who doesn’t actually exist shouldn’t be too hard), then exploit the fuck out of it.
Remember to use balaclava at the pump, and don’t use your own car.
If you don’t use your own car, how are you profiting
I think the folks of Always Sunny had a solution for this a while back.
We’ll need a wild card
You’re forgetting the video footage. They can reconstruct everything from there.
Keep it low and spread it around. Things never come out perfect and nobody notices small discrepancies because there is more important work to do than worry about it.
Lots of extra work outside of the extra rewards card, when you all have to do is: wear a medical mask, and walk up and use fuel containers.
True, true.
Work smart, not hard.
That’s not smart or hard.
Smart is knowing that service stations log your licence plates with cameras
What is this weird Lemmy world? Are you seriously saying that you’d wear a mask at the pump (already a huge LOOK AT ME I’M SUSPICIOUS problem), use someone else’s car, drive to where your car is parked, then siphon the gas into your car…all to get a free tank of gas?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say wouldn’t work anyway.
Stations have cameras.
Cars have plates.
They’d track the car to the owner and the owner would point fingers at who borrowed the car.
The camera would show the face of who was pumping the gas.
Just steal plates of another car. Not really a big deal or hard to pull off. And even without a mask, you can use just basic shades and ballcap.
I mean, the risk of getting caught is still very much there, but I’d say it’s very much lower than if you use your own plates, your own rewards car and a clear face.
Using someone else’s license plate is a felony I’m pretty sure
Which part of my earlier comment led you to believe that I was suggesting any of that was legal?
It’s not easy to read license plates from normal CCTV cameras unless they are pointing at the right spot. I used to install them at gas stations and the owners were almost always surprised by this. The best they can usually get is make, model, and color. Maybe newer cameras are better but I’m guessing the vast majority are using cheap cameras.
You can read license plates with a 5mp camera, you just need to have a narrow fov. If you have a wide angle lens, then you’re not going to be able to read them without more resolution.
What if you just went on foot with 5 gallon containers, didn’t do it frequently, and never went to the same gas station a second time?
Corporate needs you to find the difference between this woman and TurboTax.
Sorry but how is this not on the system, let alone a crime?
This slope is slick, if she is guilty of theft due to a system error then whats to stop them from saying the price you bought something at was an “error” later?
And lets face it, swiping a card 2 times breaking your system tells me that you should get better QA not charge someone.
I mean if the pump is set up not to force you to pay before pumping gas and you just pump gas and leave that’s obviously theft.
They’ll prove that she knew what she was doing. They’ll prove she knew that she was supposed to pay for the gas. They’ll prove that she did the double swipe to get the gas. But probably more damning, if that $28,000 figure is right in 6 months she wasn’t just getting herself free gas.
It’ll be interesting to hear more details like do they know that it was her every time and not other people. If she told other people how to double swipe and get the gas that’s probably fine. Maybe she was giving other people her card and instructions on how to do it that’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in court if she doesn’t settle.
Settle? this is a criminal case not a civil one. Maybe they will plead to something lesser, but ether way it is very bad precedent.
The issue here, is that someone took advantage of a broken pos system and now they are being charged. If this stands you now have the base to potentially charge anyone who uses a broken piece of tech, and tech is getting crappier and crappier by the day.
It does not matter if she took advantage or what the motive was. The underling issue is that now users can be on the hook for bad products. That is terrifying.
What about the reverse? Exploiting a security vulnerability and getting access to sensitive data that you then use for financial gain shouldn’t be a crime? Going into a house with poor quality locks and stealing things?
I’m not trying to side with big corporations here but I think you’re getting the precedent issue the wrong way around. If the actions of that person weren’t a crime, it’d be a bigger problem.
The underlying issue, that people are pushed into theft out of desperation, is far worse. I make no moral judgement of this person because I don’t know their circumstances. But I don’t think whether it is a crime or not can really be debated.
The action in question is double tapping a rewards card, at some point a security vulnerability is so bad it is negligent. I find it odd that no one is pointing out she followed the prompts on the screen when making these analogies. A better example would be having a site show you sensitive data (like say the fallout 76 bag scandal, or the sony one) and then claiming the fault is solely on the person who saw the data. I can see other charges then theft maybe, but the liability here can not just be on the person.
We are currently debating whether or not a crime has been committed so, yes it can.
She didn’t just double tap the card, she knowingly put it into demo mode. At that point you’ve gone beyond ‘oops, mistake’ territory into ‘actively screwing with the system’. On top of that, she was doing it for a profit.
If it was a once or twice or even occasional thing, you have a point - but if she keeps going back and doing it constantly, rather than alerting the owner/management of the issue, and ends up making off with $20k+ that’s when it crosses the line into theft.
That is the risk, there should not be a line where using a system crosses into theft. The odd part of all this to me is where is the culpability of the gas station in this?
Sorry but how is this not on the system, let alone a crime?
This slope is slick, if she is guilty of theft due to a system error then whats to stop them from saying the price you bought something at was an “error” later?
It comes down to intent. The reality is that she probably knew that what she was doing was wrong. I mean, come on, do you really think she thought she was supposed to get 7000 gallons of free gas? We aren’t talking about her doing it once and not realizing it.
We can debate whether she should be held accountable, but there’s no slippery slope here and let’s not pretend that she is some innocent victim getting swept up in the whims of some evil corporations trying to trick people so they can send them to jail. She stole gas and she knew it, and probably thought that she could get away with it.
Where did anyone say this person was an innocent victim? No one is debating she took advantage here, the issue is no one seems to be putting any culpability on the company who made the pump. The issue here is a slippery slope as it expects a duty to report the error from her that should not be there legally. I could see some other charge like fraud be appropriate maybe, but theft is such a bad thing to charge her with.
Where did anyone say this person was an innocent victim?
Explicitly? Nowhere. But for this to be a slippery slope to innocent victims being held criminally accountable for malfunctioning technology, she has to be.
no one seems to be putting any culpability on the company who made the pump.
Is this a joke? This comment section is awash with people saying they fucked up, so she had the right to take advantage of it. I sidestepped this question intentionally, and specifically addressed the claim that punishing her for this would almost inevitably lead to actual innocent people being punished.
The issue here is a slippery slope as it expects a duty to report the error from her that should not be there legally.
She’s not being held legally responsible for not reporting it, she is being held responsible for it for exploiting it to steal tens of thousands of dollars worth of gas.
Explicitly? Nowhere. But for this to be a slippery slope to innocent victims being held criminally accountable for malfunctioning technology, she has to be.
No she does not have to be an innocent victim for this to be a slippery slope, this is just false equivalency.
Is this a joke? This comment section is awash with people saying they fucked up, so she had the right to take advantage of it. I sidestepped this question intentionally, and specifically addressed the claim that punishing her for this would almost inevitably lead to actual innocent people being punished.
Ah, I did not realize they charged the company with a crime. Oh they did not?
She’s not being held legally responsible for not reporting it, she is being held responsible for it for exploiting it to steal tens of thousands of dollars worth of gas.
That is functionally the same thing, if she did report it after the first time I am sure no harm no foul. But if she did not report it in your eyes it is now theft (remember she stumbled upon this). If you think about this critically the number of times should not change the nature of the act.
No she does not have to be an innocent victim for this to be a slippery slope, this is just false equivalency.
Could you explain what the false equivalency is? I can’t make any sense of what you think it might be.
Ah, I did not realize they charged the company with a crime. Oh they did not?
You think they should be held liable for making a mistake and being taken advantage of? This is blaming the victim.
But if she did not report it in your eyes it is now theft
I started my initial post by very clearly stating “It comes down to intent.” The claim that I’m equating one who accidentally benefits from a glitch, to someone intentionally exploiting it over the course of months to steal tens of thousands of dollars, is ridiculous.
I do think people have the moral obligation to help someone out if they make a mistake and are vulnerable to being taken advantage of, but I certainly do not think someone should be held criminally liable for not alerting someone/something to their mistake.
false equivalency
Her being innocent or not has nothing to do with the issue of setting a bad precedent in this case being a slippery slope. If using the provided pump software with provided rewards card (granted in a way not foreseen) can be considered theft then the slippery slope is what else can be considered theft.
You think they should be held liable for making a mistake and being taken advantage of? This is blaming the victim.
Yes, they should be held liable. And then hold the makers of the pump software liable in turn. This should be a civil case between companies not a criminal case against a customer.
I started my initial post by very clearly stating “It comes down to intent.” The claim that I’m equating one who accidentally benefits from a glitch, to someone intentionally exploiting it over the course of months to steal tens of thousands of dollars, is ridiculous.
I agree that there might be a case for something else (conversion, fraud, conspiracy), but this is once again where that slope comes in. Relying on proof of intent is problematic to say the least. And yes the line of whats a whoopsy vs whats theft will come up if this goes forward. This is not ideal.
Her being innocent or not has nothing to do with the issue of setting a bad precedent in this case being a slippery slope. If using the provided pump software with provided rewards card (granted in a way not foreseen) can be considered theft then the slippery slope is what else can be considered theft.
None of this has to do with a false equivalency. Are you sure you know what the term even means?
And then hold the makers of the pump software liable in turn.
They made a mistake and their mistake didn’t even harm anyone. What on earth would they be liable for?
Relying on proof of intent is problematic to say the least.
Holy shit. You have no idea how our legal system works. It’s innocent until proven guilty. You don’t have to prove there was no intent, they would have to prove you did have intent.
And yes the line of whats a whoopsy vs whats theft will come up if this goes forward. This is not ideal.
This is moving the goal posts. We’re talking about it being a slippery slope from her intentionally exploiting something to steal tens of thousands of dollars of gas, to someone accidentally benefiting one time from a glitch in a system. What counts as a violation of the law is part of the system, which is why we have trials with a “jury of your peers” to determine whether or not you crossed the line. Is it ideal? Of course not. But it is reality.
god, what a softy pathetic serf they’ve trained you to be.
The poster made the claim that it’s some slippery slope from her intentionally exploiting a system to fraudulently get free gas, to people being held criminally responsible when a piece software glitches. I pointed out this makes no sense…and this makes me trained to be a pathetic self?
Lol you are truly one of the great thinkers of our time.
balanced nuanced debate in this age only empowers your overlords. they count on you to be rational. if you want change, the pendulum has to swing hard in the opposite direction.
Logically speaking, this has to be a joke. But based on your previous response, I’m not so sure. Please tell me this is a joke and you don’t actually believe being rational is a bad thing.
i’m being rational when i tell you that if you hold yourself to a high moral standard and expect your enemy to do the same, you’re a fool.
Wow, it’s not a joke. You actually think abandoning rationality is a good thing. Kind of explains your position.
Lemmy has a lot of anticapitalist reactionaries that will justify theft regardless of context. Even when someone steals $28k from a small business. Half the people defending her here probably think that stealing gas is sticking it to the oil companies or something…
This is why we have jury trials.
I would love to hear about the pool selection in this case.
Look into municipal sites. Try to find the arrest date to find her case. Check back regularly. I’d assume Voa Dire isn’t on the record but IDK.
“You didn’t stop me stealing from you, how is that my problem.”
If I make a self serve machine and tell everyone to use it who’s responsibility is it to ensure it’s functionality? The customer?
This would be I think more like if a staff member was not charging for gas to turn all the blame on the customers who benefited.
There’s no change to the expectation in this transaction… “I swiped my card twice, it broke the process that is supposed to happen, the proprietor does not know that this is happening, I’m not going to tell them, I guess I can just exploit this forever with no ramifications”. What’s that? The security barrier in this shop is broken? I guess everything is free now.
This happens once, that’s an oopsie freebie, you do this every time for months then that is a pattern of criminal behave. You don’t just get to take stuff because the process has broken down, and any company has the explicit right to seek recompense from you.
a pattern of criminal behave.
What kinda Kirkland brand minority report is this?
I am not saying she was not taking advantage of this flaw, but the flaw is so bad that I can not in good judgment pin her with theft. Fraud? Maybe. You also have to be careful with legal responsiblity here as it could set a dangerous legal expectation.
She was literally arriving, taking a product, knowingly not paying for it, and leaving… for months. Maybe she should also be facing a fraud case for various misrepresentations, but she clearly stole and that is most logical slam dunk of a route for the prosecutors to take… the act is verified, the guilty mind is pretty identifiable. I guess we’ll have to see how her legal team frames things.
-Every banker in 2007.
Bullshit. Corpo’s build a system that users figure out and use? Sounds like they got caught with their pants down and have to make an example. Fucking trolls.
If she was rich, the response would be, “congratulations!”, and if she was an LLC it would be a fine of… 5 percent?
0.5 percent.
0.05 percent of net income.
Oh look we paid our executives the same amount we made in profit so we have zero net income.
Yeah if it turned out my local gas station had been shorting 5% of every gallon for the past 3 years, I wouldn’t be getting back anything close to what they stole from me.
Sure this lady fucked up and took way too much free gas, but i have zero sympathy for the gas station.
And if there had been an error that charged people more rather than made gas free, it would have required a multiple-year-long class action lawsuit to resolve whereupon affected individuals would have received a few cents in compensation and a few lawyers would have come away much richer.
To all the people defending her, how is this different than just pumping and driving away? You could always pump first and pay inside later, and it works on the honour system. In this case she clearly intentionally circumvented paying.
Where the fuck can you get gas without paying first
i’ve never paid for gas before pumping only after, this is southern ontario
Some places allow filling up and then paying inside the petrol station.
It’s different in that they gave her a card that says “here is a discount”.
If you go into a store, pay with a stack of coupons from that store and walk out with a free chicken, can the store come back and charge you with a felony because they made a mistake and claim they didn’t really mean to print the coupon?
How far can this go? Buy a car on sale and then get arrested for not paying the full price afterwards? “The customer should have known the deal was too good.”
Swiping the card twice puts the machine into maintenance mode where she manually adjusted the price to zero. That’s pretty straightforward theft.
If you’re putting maintenance mode behind 2 normal swipes I don’t understand how that isn’t your fault
TIL: If the lock is easy enough to pick, you can legally break in and take whatever you want. /s
So was selling toxic assets to pension funds
We get it and all agree that rich people should also be held accountable for their crimes. You don’t need to convince anyone here.
The difference between you and those of us not defending her is that only one of us is defending exploiting a fault in the system for personal benefit.
Ia your entire argument here that because the ultra-rich get away with financial crimes that everyone should be allowed to commit them?
If she went to a gas station one time and swiped her card and it gave her free gas, it’s reasonable to think that she might have assumed the discount gave her free gas on the first use. This wouldn’t be an issue.
When she’s using it to get over $20,000 in gas, selling gas to others by using her double swipe technique, that falls well outside the reasonable bounds of an honest mistake.
So no, there is no slippery slope where you’re going to be locked up for a store misapplying a coupon or whatever.
how do these fuckin bootlickers find their way to lemmy?
That may have worked in the past, but not recently, at least not around here. Pump won’t function until the attendant activates it. (Per the signs, “cash customers pay before dispensing gas.”)
If you do it once, good for you. If you do it repeatedly, also good for you. But if you “used 510 times, and more than 7,400 gallons of gas were pumped for free”( in only a 7 month period), I don’t know what you expect. You’re going 2-3 times a day getting 14gal every time.
The article says she let another person use her card for a fee.
That should be the illegal part. Taking advantage of a loophole should not be illegal. Charging other people so that you can take advantage of the loophole, on the other hand, is a scam.
Pretty sure that was the illegal part and the title left that step out.
No, charging other people so that you can take advantage of a loophole is called Tax Preparation
It’s still a scam though. Just, unfortunately, a legal scam.
There it is
So what? Why do we cheer when regular people get caught abusing the system while the ruling class does it every single day?
I think most of ya’ll are just jealous while thinking you’re “so much smarter than her” because you wouldn’t have been caught.
Children, the lot of you.
How about people shouldn’t steal, no matter who?
I am 100% cool with stealing from rich people since they only get rich by abusing others.
Fuck’em.
Yeah, okay, the rest of us aren’t criminals
Sure you are.
Ever jay-walked?
There it is. She got greedy. If she would have just minded her own business and not told anyone and kept it on the down low it would have probably never been figured out. Regardless, this is 100%. The business is responsibility and should not be blamed on anyone else.
Receiving free gas is a function of the gas card. Responsibility lies with the company and team who designed three card, not with the woman who used the card as designed.
It’s not a gas card though, it’s a reward card.
Those are designed to give back at most some small % of your purchase if you use enough money.
If a security van crashed in front of you and spilled out gold, would you be allowed to take it because “it’s their responsibility to not crash”?
I’m all for fucking corporations, but your rhetoric seems flawed.
Bad analogy, on multiple fronts. Better:
A truck is on its way to deliver gold to you (you have been told this is happening). When it gets to you, the driver hands you a gold bar. You aay, “Thanks! Can I have another?” The driver hands you a second bar. Then you are charged with theft of the second bar, presumably because it was illegal to ask for it.
Right, I just had this happen with a stove. I ordered one, guy came to deliver it, then said we have another in your name, do you want it? LoL
“I mean sure, why not, I’ll take it”
FBI chopper rips into view with multiple black unmarked SUVs following suite, surrounding you. FBI raid team begins to zip line down from the chopper. Guy takes his “J&J delivery nylon jacket off only to reveal a nylon FBI jacket underneath.
“Nice try, punk”
Not the same, because there’s a person who’s supposed to say “no”.
Yes, the computer is also supposed to say “no”, but surprisingly, laws don’t regard computers and people as being inherently the same thing when it comes to criminal liability.
More like you pay someone for gold. While delivering the gold to you, the gold delivery vehicle falls over and spills all the gold on the ground. Is it now yours?
Property laws exist for a reason. There’s even intangible property, like intellectual property. Although most IP laws are complete and utter bullshit, since they haven’t been around for nearly as long and have been lobbied to be whatever grotesque things they currently are.
And that wouldn’t necessarily be theft in your example, more like slight fraud, insofar that you’re basically convincing the driver (the automated computer in the real life example, which is why people and computer aren’t comparable, and now we have to consider this person to be some sort of mindless drone for the purposes of this hypothetical) that you are due two gold bars, even when you know it’s fraudulent and you’re only supposed to get one.
Because we all know the rewards system isn’t supposed to give out free gas. If you’re a person who’s cognitively capable of understanding what a rewards system is, you’re capable of understanding that.
What a reasonable person might do in that case is perhaps get gas free a few times, but there’s no way of arguing that a reasonable person took 28 000 dollars worth of gas without realising he was doing a serious crime.
Property laws exist for a reason.
Yes, to protect rich fucks and guarantee they can hoard as much wealth as possible.
As always, it depends on what the courts say.
That said, yeah it kind of is on them not to crash. If I was on that jury, I would vote ‘not-guilty’ to anyone who picked up money that was laying around on the ground, especially if it’s public property.
My mom once paid a painter hundreds of dollars in cash, and he lost most of it when pulling his hand out of his pocket and the money blew away. Anyone who finds that money should get to keep it.
A man was acquitted in the US for killing his wife during Prohibition after he got out of jail and found out she sold all his stuff. He literally admitted to doing it and the jury said “not guilty” and cheered when the verdict was read.
It’s going to come down to, was there reason to suspect the machine was a bug?
I assume she swiped rewards, and the. Swiped rewards again when it was asking for a credit/debit card; in which case it’d be the card equivalent of trying to pay with Monopoly money.
it depends on what the courts say.
The court decide what laws are to be enforced, the laws being decided by the legislative part of the government, which is formed of the people, who are you.
So indirectly, our subjective morality decides what the courts say, indirectly. I’m asking what your innate sense would tell you to do in that hypothetical?
My mom once paid a painter hundreds of dollars in cash, and he lost most of it when pulling his hand out of his pocket and the money blew away. Anyone who finds that money should get to keep it.
Well, in transactional situations that would be pretty subjective. Who fudged it? Subjective. Depending on the sum, there could definitely be an argument.
And what if it was like an open check (btw checks are not a thing everywhere, I’ve seen maybe a dozen in my life and I’m 34, they’re so insecure we don’t use them) for a million dollars? With the value, it would definitely be different.
I think there are laws about lottery coupons as well. Different ones for different places in the world, but still.
Some of those laws say for instance you have to return it, but also that returning something very valuable gives you the right to a finder’s fee.
So “finder’s keeper’s” isn’t quite as simple as we’d like to.
In this specific instance, I really don’t mind someone having abused the system, but technically it would be at least a bit of fraud here. Tanking up once or twice for free would be an understandable happy accident, draining 28k worth of gas is clearly malicious and organised theft.
I don’t mind the occasional theft from corporations, but 28k is a bit beyond the normal robin hooding. Corporations suck currently but we can’t replace a thieving system with a system with even more thieving.
Casual thieving fine, but this is rather organised
If you used a glitch to get a high score in a video game, should the developers be allowed to call the police on you?
Are you stealing someone’s property?
No. You’re playing a videogame.
If they accidentally left a hole in their code that allowed you an infinite money glitch in a large MMO, you probably wouldn’t be sued, as you’ve rather generated money than stolen it, despite it having real world value. However if you systematically abuse a gold thing, even making bots to do it for you, on a large scale, then it could be seen as criminal. (I believe Runescape has had cases like that.)
If they left a glitch in their system that allowed you access to their main server and you managed to easily get access to the whole company’s finances, should they be allowed to call the cops on you?
and that’s why goose and gander thinkers will always be at the bottom of the ladder. it’s ok when the good guys do it, it’s not okay when the bad guys do it. choose chaotic good and we start winning. choose lawful good and you’re a sucker.
Seems to me like the reward was free gas.
If you’ve developed your system that the rewards card can provide a bypass to free fuel, your system is the flawed one and it isn’t on the customer to provide feedback. This isn’t a user testing scenario, they should have solved this bug before it went to production.
People aren’t responsible for cheaply built solutions.
If you’ve developed your system that the rewards card can provide a bypass to free fuel,
Why would any company design such an easy hack to give out free gas? It’s obviously a malfunction, which happen all the time.
Hell, even game developers rarely leave in consoles for cheat commands anymore in videogames, and giving those out don’t actually bankrupt the company they’re making the game for.
It’s not the customer’s responsibility to try to figure out why and make some determination if the too good to be true deal is real. If it gave it out for a penny, is that too much of a deal? What about half price? 1 penny discount? Where’s the line?
Regardless, I could see someone designing it as a feature because “nobody would ever swipe their card twice normally”.
Where’s the line?
I hope you don’t think that’s a new observation by any means. If you’re genuinely interested, why not look it up?
First off, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
Secondly, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus
The man on the Clapham omnibus is a hypothetical ordinary and reasonable person, used by the courts in English law where it is necessary to decide whether a party has acted as a reasonable person would. The term was introduced into English law during the Victorian era, and is still an important concept in British law. It is also used in other Commonwealth common law jurisdictions, sometimes with suitable modifications to the phrase as an aid to local comprehension.
The more general concept (the one in use in the US, for instance) is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person
I’d like to see a lawyer who would argue that “any reasonable person living and functioning in society could conceivable construe that them taking 28 000 dollars worth of gas was definitely the system working as designed, and they were at no point aware that they were doing anything illlegal.”
Regardless, I could see someone designing it as a feature because “nobody would ever swipe their card twice normally”.
Ugh, really? In software development, or in developing anything that involves an end-user, such things are taken into consideration. Especially when there’s payment cards involved.
Quote by a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park on why it is hard to design the perfect garbage bin to keep bears from breaking into it: “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
I’d like to see a lawyer who would argue that “any reasonable person living and functioning in society could conceivable construe that them taking 28 000 dollars worth of gas was definitely the system working as designed, and they were at no point aware that they were doing anything illlegal.”
“There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
“I thought I’d won some kind of free gas contest, why else would my card give free gas?”
People can honestly be idiots as you pointed out.
The business holds all the cards when it comes to asking for and accepting payment. If they failed to do that in the way they wanted, it’s on them.
Ugh, really? In software development, or in developing anything that involves an end-user, such things are taken into consideration. Especially when there’s payment cards involved.
Thanks for the good laugh, this indicates way more faith in business side middle managers than is due. They ask for dumb shit all the time and make the devs do it. While I can’t rule out it being some kind of coding defect, because those also happen all the time, there’s definitely a non-zero probability that someone asked for it to work this way because it was convenient to operate or cheap to implement. Companies involved in payment processing are far from infallible, they just eat their mistakes and make the customer whole most of the time. I’ve worked at 2 different large banks, shit is held together with duct tape, prayers and throwing money at it some of the time.
People are idiots.
For instance, if they don’t understand law and refuse to look it up, they might still argue something ridiculous that’s closer to how primary schoolers think law works.
“I thought I won a contest so I drained 28 000 dollars worth of gas”
You can say that in court, but it’s not true and no-one would believe it. One, maaybe two times of tanking for free you could still do with that excuse and maybe get away with it.
28 000 dollars worth?
Nope.
Thanks for the good laugh, this indicates way more faith in business side middle managers than is due
You might have developed something, but you’ve clearly never worked with developing/coding actual payment systems. To even suggest someone would even think about putting in a “hack” like that is, no offense, quite silly indeed. And definitely criminal.
Fuck ups happen all the time. But no-one puts in a designed function which gives out gas. That’s laughable. Ridiculous. Childish.
Most gas cards are designed to give out small rewards, this particular gas card was designed to give out bigger rewards.
If an ice cream scooper mistakenly gives one person a larger scoop than anyone else, I don’t blame the person with more ice cream, that’s obviously the responsibility of the ice cream scooper.
Designing a rewards card that functions correctly and a car crashing because presumably something has gone wrong are very different situations.
A deer didn’t kick the fuel pump, wires weren’t damaged in the register; everything worked as it was designed to, including the double swipe resulting in free gas.
That’s not how the rewards work though.
There’s basically an account to which you accumulate your entire spendings, and based off that, you’ll get a a few % off at most, in form of either a flat out discount or perhaps in some other form.
“Designing IT systems that function perfectly” is what you meant to say with “designing a rewards card that functions correctly”. Do you have any idea of how many technologies and codes and databases are interacting with such a “simple” thing as showing your rewards card to a reader? I’m guessing not.
“Everything worked as it was designed to”
So you think someone designed a system to give out free gas? What a great business model. Perfect design, isn’t it?
You’ve made many incorrect assumptions.
“‘Designing IT systems that function perfectly’ is what you meant to say”
No, that is not what I meant to say
“Do you have any idea of how many technologies and codes and databases are interacting with such a “simple” thing as showing your rewards card to a reader? I’m guessing not.”
Guess all you want; yes, I do.
“So you think someone designed a system to give out free gas?”
Obviously.
“What a great business model.”
No, it’s a terrible business model because you receive no compensation for the resources you’re selling.
That company should refine their design.
Sorry, but if they didn’t test their hardware against swiping twice, that’s 100% on them. Obviously you can’t catch every bug but that doesn’t make it not your fault when something slips through. A responsible company doesn’t blame the user, it fixes the problem and then figures out how to improve development and QA practices so it doesn’t happen again.
It’s not the user’s job to QA your product. If the product allows them to do something without tampering with it, that might as well be its design.
Yeah because updates to software never happen.
What are you, 5?
might as well be
But it isn’t. And intent is a very big part in law.
Learn some law, kiddo
I totally agree and share this sentiment among MMOs.
If you design your game or product like shit and there are exploits, it’s YOUR FAULT for designing it with exploits, not the customer’s fault for actually using them.
If they don’t like it, then they can do better.
Please put me on this jury. Fastest not-guilty verdict ever.
What’s your address and how good is your home security system?
I mean if I can find a way to get into your house and rob you without immediately getting caught, I shouldn’t be convicted even if the cops later find evidence later. Right?
I genuinely feel bad for you if you think you have a point.
The point is that you haven’t really thought things through.
If you’re poor and you exploit a loophole you receive a felony theft charge. If you’re rich enough you receive no repercussions and possibly a bonus.
No, this isn’t a loophole. She found a way to put the pump into maintence mode and set the price to zero. “The computer let me do it” isn’t much of an excuse. The self checkout at the grocery store lets me tare a steak like it’s bananas, but I’d definitely expect shopplifting charges if I got caught tricking the machine to charge me $0.40/lb for steak so I could fill my bag with steaks. There would be plenty of evidence that what I did was intentional and dishonest.
She exploited this glitch for $28k worth of gas in just 7 months, presumably for profit. That’s way more gas than a single vehicle would consume in that time.
This wasn’t a case of just paying what the screen said she owed. This was a case of gaining unauthorized access to the computer and adjusting the price to zero so she could steal at scale.
Yet when 2008 happened they got a bail out and a pat on the back. Trick a machine? Felony theft charge. Trick the American people? Bail out.
Two things can be true, and you can agree with one and disagree with the other.
Very well. Please clear up the misunderstanding and say the words “the bailouts should never have happened and everyone involved in that disaster should have faced felony charges”
The bailouts should never have happened and everyone involved in that disaster should have faced felony charges.
Now, can you say the words “anyone that steals things of more than $10,000 in value should face felony charges”?
anyone that steals things of more than $10,000 in value should face felony charges.
She didn’t.
Narrator voice: “She did.”
Oooo, I wanna read them type that. LOL.
I’m not them, I just want to type that anyway.
The bailouts should never have happened and everyone involved in that disaster should have faced felony charges.
It felt good to say, thanks.
Nice
Did the computer let those mortgage backed securities get sold to pension funds? Yes? Guess it isn’t an excuse
Not “presumably for profit”, definitely for profit. The article mentions one person that paid her $500 for about $700 worth of fuel in that 6 months because she was told it was a discount card. She was literally charging other people for the gas directly. And 7400 gallons of gas in 6 months, that’s well over 100k miles with a low ball estimate for fuel economy. She probably pocketed nearly 20k cash in that time.
She got greedy. Back when a buddy and I administered our SWIFT platform there were a couple of well publicized exploits of the system for millions. We discussed how easy it would be to write a script to randomly skim a fraction of a cent off of transactions over a long period of time, just don’t get greedy. No one cares about rounding errors.
If this lady stuck to random fillups for free once every couple of months she probably could have flew under the radar for years and more importantly had a better claim to ignorance if caught.
This is just the plot of office space
Never watched it
You should watch it because this truly is the plot.
I’ll put it on my list. British or American or both?
Office Space, not The Office.
At first I was with you but I was curious how she used $28,000 worth of gas and I’m kinda not with you anymore. I mean, has is expensive but let’s be realistic, no poor person is buying a year’s wages on gas over 6 months lol
“All told, the card was used 510 times, and more than 7,400 gallons of gas were pumped for free, the probable cause statement said.” The article also says she was letting other people pay her to use her card to get gas - so the gas pumped out free and they paid her a portion of what the gas would have been if they had paid the actual pump. That’s actually not the kind of thing I can really defend as just putting the poor people down.
Maybe they should fix their shitty ass software instead of arresting her?
They didn’t arrest her. The cops did. If she didn’t want to be arrested, she probably shouldn’t have stolen tens of thousands of dollars worth of gas. She’s a thief, plain and simple. We can rail against a justice system that allows the rich to get away with crimes, while also recognizing that this woman is just a thief and there is no need to defend her.
You say thief, I say opportunist
Surely you don’t actually believe that the police officers that does the arresting are working a secondary job as software developers?
Surely you don’t believe I give a shit - the police work for the capital, and the capital wants to punish her.
The police works for the government. The government operates by laws. The woman clearly, knowingly, and with intent, set out to commit fraud.
No. There’s no doubt in my mind that you give shit about what’s actually factual. That much is obvious.
While you’re right, also still sounds like schemes rich business leaders get a wag of a finger over. So it’s not so much about it being too harsh on her, but instead how malicious rich person schemes earn too much leniency.
This is what I thought at first too. But after thinking about it more, it kind of falls into cybercrime. I can imagine hearing something like this on darknet diaries.
if we don’t respond with violence we deserve this shit. it’s obvious that the system and the people that run it are sociopaths. if you give a sociopath human dignity that just makes you the fool.
They do this fun thing in the US for that its called “fucking shoot you”. I agree its all fucked up, but if you go an riot and respond with violence you just die dude. I don’t want somebody else raising my children because I got shot by the sheriffs patrol
if you can’t organize well enough to handle a local sheriff’s department, you’re pathetic. give me 5 well-armed and coordinated individuals and i’ll show you how to make the bastards scared of us.
I’m sure the feds are shaking, @masterblaster420.
Violence isn’t a way to solve this problem, it would only justify the use of force which the police/military are most willing to do. Fascism develops faster in the face of violence as a way to justify itself.
the threat of force has always been the elephant in the room for any society. if you’re scared to fight back, you will be bullied.
