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With Pain At The Pump, Thieves Are Throwing Back To Siphoning Gas

NEWPORT BEACH (CBSLA)   -- With gas prices soaring, thieves are doing their best to get a fill-up without going to the pump.

Gas siphoning is back.

As KCAL9's Stacey Butler reports, people in Newport Beach are waking up to a new reality.

"From inside of my house, I could see something was on the asphalt," says one man, who didn't want to be identified. "I went over, check it, my gas cap was wide open. I went over, and noticed they siphoned about a quarter tank of my gas."

The homeowner says he was targeted twice by gas thieves in front of his home in a two-day period.

He never thought his 1990 Chevy Blazer would catch the attention of thieves. But later model cars without locking gas caps make for easy targets.

He posted a warning to his neighbors on the NextDoor app and was overwhelmed by the number of responses.

One neighbor wrote, "Happened to me, too. Except they broke off the inside of my gas funnel. A $500 fix."

Another posted, "I has gas siphoned from my car sometime in the middle of the night Sunday."

Siphoning gas is not new. The 70s called and they want their crime back.

"If they're doing this at two or three o'clock in the morning, that just shows you what kind of activity is going on in this general area when everybody's sound asleep."

Gas prices are the highest they have been in three years and experts see them going higher.

Says Oscar Camacho, "It's insane that it's $4 now. I'd rather ride my bike."

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