It’s a pretty slick operation: A couple of men drive an old moving truck behind a fried chicken restaurant in Villa Rica and help themselves to barrels filled with used cooking oil.
But the theft is nothing to sniff at. The restaurant's owner tells Channel 2 Action News that the oil could fetch about $300 total when sold to a recycler to be turned into biodiesel fuel.
The theft happened early Saturday morning at the Big Chic restaurant. Authorities said the suspects used a hose to siphon oil from 55-gallon barrels behind the eatery.
A surveillance video shows two men drive up in a truck marked "Pacific Moving and Storage" but with the "P" and "C" faded away. They first check out a nearby Mexican restaurant and find only grease. Then, they come over to the Big Chic and find used vegetable oil in barrels.
They then proceed to pump out the oil. The heist takes less than eight minutes.
Big Chic owner Roger Fuller told Channel 2 that used oil goes for roughly $1.57 a gallon, but the thieves “can get more for it if they know who to sell it to, and I’m sure they do, because the way the truck looked to me … this was a way of life for them.”
Villa Rica police Capt. Keith Shaddix said, “If they’re going around to other restaurants and hitting four to five a night, it could easily be from $1,000 to $1,500 a night they are taking.”
Police hope someone will recognize the truck.
-- The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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