Slippery Thieves Steal Gallons Of Used Cooking Oil From NJ Businesses
GLEN ROCK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- Police in New Jersey are looking for a pair of thieves who were caught on camera siphoning recycled cooking oil from area businesses.
Security footage shows the two bandits slowly walking from behind a van with what looks like a hose. One of the men placed the hose into a barrel and let it rip, sucking and stealing gallons and gallons of the grisly grease straight into their vehicle.
Young Kwak owns the shopping plaza on Maple Avenue in Glen Rock where it happened.
"Thank God we got the video and recording," he said.
The brazen bandits were clearly in no rush. At one point one of them actually looked straight into the security camera. The whole heist went down just feet from nearby residents' homes.
Each of the drums holds 650 pounds of oil, and police say the burger-grease-burglars made off with two of them. Not only that, investigators think they've struck before.
"To the average person on the street, they're not knowing that is being stolen," Glen Rock Detective Sergeant James Calaski said. "It just looks like a company that's contracted to pick it up."
Typically, restaurants have separate contractors come pick up their used cooking oil, which is often recycled and used for things like heating. The black market for similar crimes can be lucrative, and more common than people think.
"We'll see maybe one or two a month in detective bureaus as far as putting out alerts, looking for information on these type of thefts," Calaski said.
In this case, police say the crooks slipped away with hundreds of dollars worth of oil.
