Getting Gas for Free Comes at a Price

Jan. 13, 2009— -- With the average gallon of gas still less than $2, the summer's excruciatingly high gas prices are now just a painful memory of how bad it can get.

But at the height of the gas price crisis, when the average approached $5 per gallon, a new type of blue collar crime started making headlines -- gas theft.

Watch the story on "What Would You Do?" Tuesday, Jan. 13th, at 10 p.m. ET.

Though prices have fallen since then, so has the economy and poaching petrol is still a growing problem. According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, gas theft cost the industry more than $134 million last year alone. A search of YouTube yielded plenty of videos where ordinary people show the steps it takes to pilfer petroleum.

So what would you do if you saw someone stealing gas?

In the midst of the hubbub over soaring gas prices, ABC News' "What Would You Do?" set up hidden cameras at a service station in suburban New York to see what would happen when customers saw a gas theft happen right in front of them.

ABC News hired an actor to drive up to the pump and start filling up his car. When he went inside to pay, another actor pulled up on the other side of the pump, took the nozzle out of the victim's car and started filling up his own tank.

"I saw the guy doing it and, and I, at first thought they were together. I thought maybe, maybe they had an arrangement. But then it was a little too fishy," customer Gerald Heintz said. "And, you know, that's when I said, 'Hey, dude.' You know, 'What's going on?'"

Heintz didn't stop the thief, but told the victim what had happened.

"My first obligation is to my family," he said. "I don't want to, you know, start having a confrontation with the guy."

Michael Pitaro, who also noticed the gas pump theft, said he has no sympathy for people that need gas that bad.

"We're all going through this gas crisis, it's not just me. You know, it's not just him, it's not just anybody, we're all going through it," he said. "I mean I had, one of my customers the other day said everybody should just stop buying gas for one day, I mean everybody should stop buying gas for a couple of days because this is, you know, ridiculous."

But should he have spoken up?

"Maybe I should have [said something], I could have been maybe a little more attentive," Pitaro said, "but it's really none of my business, you know, today you don't know if somebody's going to turn around and shoot you for saying, 'What are you doing?'"