Russian authorities have broken up a fraud scheme employed by dozens of gas station employees to overcharge customer into paying more money for less quantity of fuel they bought.
The employees involved in the scam used software programmes on electronic gas pumps to short customers between 3 to 7 percent of gas pumped into the customer's tanks. This software was found only on gas stations located throughout the south of Russia.
According to Rosbalt and other multiple Russian media outlets, the Russian Federal Security (FBS) arrested a hacker named Denis Zayev in Stavropol, and charged him with creating several software programmes that he designed to con customers.
The FSB explained that the hacker designed the software programme and then sold them to the rogue gas station employees. However, Zayev and the gas station employees would have an agreement in which he is to receive a cut from the money overpaid by the customer. This cut earned Zayev and the gas station employees hundreds of millions of rubles.
The malicious software made gas pumps to display false data, cash registers and also hide data sales of a station's illicit surplus gasoline.
So strong was the malware that it was almost impossible for it to be detected by local inspectors and oil companies that monitored inventory remotely.
Though with all the software's stealth mode operation, it is still unknown what tipped the Russian authorities to the scam.