The Federal Bureau of Inquiry raided the headquarters of Red Ball Express Trucking this morning, arresting the CEO, Budd Boetticher, and the CIO, Taffy Smith. Police from Delano, GA assisted the operation by executing arrest warrants for sixteen truck drivers employed by the company. According to Johnathan Quest, FBI spokesperson, this combined operation was in response to a month’s long investigation into the ongoing theft of diesel fuel from the Flying A Fuel Stops chain.
Andrew Mellon, spokesperson for the Flying A chain, the company has been having large shortages of fuel at each of their truck stops located along highways across the southern tier of the United States over the last year. “More fuel was being pumped each day than sales were being recorded,” Mellon told reporters; “An internal investigation led to the detention of a driver from Red Ball who had a device that allowed him to steal about 30 gallons of diesel during a routine fill-up at one of our pumps.”
That driver cooperated with the FBI, providing information that was the basis for the search warrant and arrest warrants executed this morning. “The driver told us that each Red Ball truck was provided with a Wi-Fi device that allowed them to take 30 gallons of fuel before the pump started registering the sale,” Quest told reporters.
ECS-CERT is cooperating with the FBI’s investigation. Immanuel C. Securitage told reporters that the devices communicated with the local station system via Wi-Fi. “No hacking was done by the drivers, the corporate fuel systems had previously been compromised,” Securitage explained, “We are still trying to determine how that system was initially attacked.”
Mellon told reporters that over the last year the company had about 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel stollen, 30-gallons at a time. “The rise in fuel prices over that time period have made this a very costly theft and we are not sure that this is covered by our cyber insurance policy.” Mellon said.
