Fuel booklets taken in recent shoppette theft

[unhappycamper]

Fuel booklets taken in recent shoppette theft
By Steve Mraz and Chris Miles, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, November 27, 2007

U.S. officials have warned German gas stations to be on the lookout for stolen AAFES fuel coupons after a large amount of the coupons were taken from a Heidelberg shoppette last week.

Gas stations as far away as Kaiserslautern have been given a list of a few hundred coupon booklet numbers to monitor. The booklets — sold by the Army and Air Force Exchange Service to allow U.S. drivers to buy gas at a discounted rate at off-base stations — are stamped with a number specific to each coupon book.

“U.S. police notified us and gave us a list of a few hundred coupon numbers to look out for,” said M. Steffon, manager of an Esso station just outside Kaiserslautern’s Rhine Ordnance Barracks who wouldn’t give his full first name. “If these coupons show up, then we were told to decline them and call American police. We have not seen one of these coupons show up at our station.”

Neither AAFES officials nor the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command would disclose how many coupon booklets were taken, saying they didn’t want jeopardize the investigation. But Chris Grey, a CID spokesman, said in an e-mail that a “large amount” of AAFES fuel coupons was stolen.

Even if just 200 coupon books were stolen, the total would be worth tens of thousands of dollars in fuel. The current cost of a 200-liter AAFES coupon book of normal unleaded gas in Germany is $172.

Sometime on the night of Nov. 19, Heidelberg’s Campbell Barracks food court and shoppette were burglarized. The main wooden doors into the food court were smashed at the lock. Wood chips were scattered on the floor.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50530