Community Government Police & Fire

Stolen fuel cards were used 767 times before city noticed

A Tacoma man stole three fuel cards from city of Gig Harbor vehicles and ran up more than $52,000 in fraudulent charges in 2022 and 2023, according to Pierce County Superior Court and Washington State Auditor’s Office documents. 

The city didn’t notice the theft or the fraudulent charges for 15 months, documents indicate. During that time, the Tacoma man or others used the cards 767 times to buy $52,568 worth of gas, according to court documents.

The city spends about $200,000 a year on fuel cards for its vehicles and equipment, according to the audit report.

Scott William McComb, 59, of Tacoma pleaded guilty in Pierce County Superior Court on March 28 to charges including first degree theft, first and second degree possession of stolen property and unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle. Under a plea agreement with prosecutors, Judge Thomas P. Quinlan sentenced McComb to 25 months in prison and 25 months in community custody. 

Gig Harbor Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm, whose department operates the trucks from which McComb stole the fuel cards, said the city subsequently made several changes to ensure that such a theft does not occur again.

City didn’t immediately notice theft

McComb stole the cards from inside Public Works vehicles parked at the city’s fleet maintenance yard on Skansie Avenue. He was not a city employee. 

The city doesn’t know exactly when the theft occurred, but the audit report says unauthorized charges began in August 2022. 

Langhelm and Gig Harbor Police Chief Kelly Busey said city workers found no obvious signs of a burglary at the maintenance yard. Investigators believe McComb simply scaled the fence there. 

The city of Gig Harbor’s Public Works Operations Center on Skansie Avenue.

Once inside the fence, Langhelm said, McComb picked older vehicles and “jimmied the locks.” It wouldn’t necessarily be obvious that the trucks had been tampered with. 

“These are old-school vehicles. You put the key in the door and you turn it,” Langhelm said. “If somebody jimmied the door open and didn’t damage it,” a city employee likely just assumed that a previous user mistakenly left the door unlocked. 

The stolen gas cards were each assigned to a specific vehicle. The city’s practice at the time was to leave the gas cards in their assigned vehicles. That way the next person using the vehicle would have access to its gas card. 

PIN code easy to decipher

Each of those vehicles bore an identification number. That number was printed on the gas card, and also was the default PIN code for that card. Langhelm believes McComb must have correctly guessed that the vehicle ID was also the PIN code.

The city changed both practices after discovering the theft and fraud. Employees keep gas cards in a locked drawer inside a locked building, and PIN codes are no longer automatically the same as the vehicle number.

So why did it take 15 months to discover the theft and fraud?

Langhelm said it’s not unheard of for gas cards to go missing from city vehicles. That typically happened because an employee forgot they were using a city-owned gas card and put it in his or her wallet out of habit.

“That had happened many times” without fraud being involved, Langhelm said.

An excerpt from the police investigation included in the court documents also notes McComb stole the cards from “seldom-used” city-owned vehicles.

Most of the fraudulent gas purchases took place in Tacoma. Langhelm said that wouldn’t necessarily raise a red flag, either, since employees sometimes drive across the bridge as part of their duties. 

The city of Gig Harbor’s Public Works Operations Center on Skansie Avenue.

Police investigation

Gig Harbor police tracked down McComb after viewing surveillance footage from gas stations where he used the pilfered gas cards.

In at least one instance, a woman with McComb used an EBT card, issued through the state Department of Health and Human Services, to buy items while he pumped his ill-gotten gas. Detectives tracked who had that EBT card. They later discovered that McComb lived in a trailer in her Tacoma driveway.

The trailer was stolen. So was the Chevy Tahoe parked in front of it.

After obtaining a warrant to search the trailer, police found one of the stolen gas cards discarded on the floor.

McComb claimed he purchased the gas card from an acquaintance for $300. Busey said police investigated that claim but found no evidence to support it. They believe McComb was responsible for the burglary as well as the use of the gas cards.

McComb told police he used the cards to fuel vehicles he was driving. He also pumped gas into other peoples’ vehicles in exchange for cash.

According to court documents, McComb’s criminal history includes previous convictions for drug possession, vehicle theft, identity theft, forgery and other crimes in Pierce and Thurston counties, federal court and Nevada.

State audit recommendations

The state audit report recommended the city take a number of steps to promote security of its fuel cards. Among them is to “establish restrictions on fuel cards, such as transaction limits or limits on the number of daily charges.”

“The City’s Public Works Department did not perform effective reconciliations of fuel card charges to ensure they were for City purposes and reasonable based on the assigned vehicle’s fuel type,” the report said. “The City’s reconciliation did not identify or follow up on red flags such as fuel purchases made outside of regular working hours or gasoline purchases made on a fuel card assigned to a diesel vehicle.”

Langhelm said the city is making or has made those changes. The city also plans to install fuel pumps eventually, eliminating or limiting the need to rely on fuel cards.

“We made the changes immediately after we found out there was an issue and we found out the cards were compromised,” Langhelm said.