$100s worth of fuel for $1

In the early part of 2013, a strange story began making its way around Powell: If you used a prepaid credit card at McIntosh Oil Company’s automated pumps, you could get all the gasoline you wanted for $1.

“It would pump and not stop,” Steven Gilmore of Powell would later explain to a judge. “So I got like (a) $20 gift card, went over there. My buddy said I could fill my tank with 20 bucks, and I could.”

Over a three-day span in May 2013, Gilmore pumped or helped pump nearly $2,800 worth of fuel into various vehicles — and even into drums he could resell — while the machines charged only $13.

It was a bargain — and a crime.

Gilmore, 29, apologized to one of McIntosh’s owners several months later and asked if he could just pay them back, but it had become a police matter at that point. He ultimately served two months in jail and was sentenced in October to five years of supervised probation for a felony count of larceny.

He was one of 12 people who were prosecuted for exploiting the glitch at McIntosh Oil to steal more than $9,000 worth of fuel (somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 gallons) between late 2012 and mid 2013.

Some individuals filled up their tanks a handful of times, while five took or helped take upwards of $1,000 worth of fuel.

The last of the criminal cases finally wrapped up last month. Total punishments for the dozen defendants included $4,275 in court fines and fees, one trip to boot camp, five months of jail time, nearly 20 years of probation and requirements to pay back all the ill-gotten gasoline and diesel.

Law enforcement never compiled a definitive account of how the glitch was discovered or how word of it spread. However, court records suggest it could have begun in late 2012. That’s when former Powell resident Jared J. Good, 28, tried buying some gas with a prepaid card and realized he’d only been charged $1.

“It was just an accident at first,” Good later explained at his sentencing for misdemeanor larceny. “I took advantage of it.”

He pumped around $1,025 worth of fuel and ended up serving about two months in jail.

Others started exploiting the loophole in March 2013, a Powell police investigation found, with the thefts really picking up in late April.

“I just heard a rumor about it and made a foolish decision to see it, and it worked and I just kept going,” Jason Seth Jolley, 25, explained at his sentencing last month.

Jolley, who now lives in Colorado, took or was involved in taking around $1,500 worth of fuel. His father, 50-year-old Jason Harold Jolley of Lovell, pumped $1,822.38 worth of fuel during three trips to McIntosh’s pumps in April and May 2013. He paid $3.

As first-time offenders, both Jolleys received deferred prosecution agreements that allow them to avoid felony larceny convictions by paying back what they stole and obeying the law.

After spending a night in jail, successfully completing a year of probation and paying full restitution plus $245 in court fees, the elder Jolley’s case was formally dismissed in April 2015.

At his Dec. 10 sentencing hearing, the younger Jolley told District Court Judge Steven Cranfill he appreciated the second chance.

“It was just a selfish, stupid mistake, and I lost a pretty good friend and a lot of money over it — and that type of life is not the type of life I want,” the younger Jolley said.

He spent about a week in jail after the charge was filed and is now serving five years of unsupervised probation.

Derek A. Sexton (also known as Derek Garza), 22,  accompanied Gilmore and the younger Jolley on some of their fueling trips, pumping or helping pump around $1,325. He got a conviction for felony larceny.

“I didn’t ever think it was OK,” an apologetic Sexton told Judge Cranfill at his sentencing, back in the spring of 2014. “I just justified it as being selfish, and that’s all.”

Before sending Sexton to the Wyoming Department of Corrections’ boot camp program (which he’s since completed), the judge told the young man he would have to “realize you can’t just behave this way, and that we can’t condone this kind of activity.”

“Our society can’t live that way,” Judge Cranfill said.

The glitch was brought to McIntosh Oil’s attention by its payment processor in April 2013, just as the thefts were really picking up, a Powell police investigation found. The company’s owners soon installed surveillance cameras that caught most of the defendants red-handed.

Powell police dug deeper into the case: They pulled other surveillance camera footage of the prepaid cards being purchased (to prove the defendants knew they didn’t have enough money for the fuel), obtained a vast amount of data on how and when the cards had been used and conducted numerous interviews to pin down who’d been exploiting the glitch.

For example, in bringing a misdemeanor charge against a man who appeared to have only used the glitch one time, police were able to note he’d checked his prepaid card’s $2.68 balance several times before using it to get $52.14 in gas.

All told, roughly $12,000 was taken from McIntosh Oil Company, court records said. Police were able to track about $9,100 of those losses back to the 12 defendants. The identities of opportunists who made off with the other $3,000 worth of gasoline and diesel remain a mystery.