AVENTUREA, Fla. – Three men were arrested Tuesday for tampering with gas station scanners at a Marathon Gas Station in Aventura, police said.
An officer was called to the gas station in the 21000 block of Biscayne Boulevard when a call came in about a black Cadillac Escalade that had pulled up very close to pump No. 5 at the station, an arrest report said.
The driver of the vehicle, Yankiel Blanco, 33, was standing next to the pump acting as a look out, police said. Meanwhile, Alexey Abreu-Chapotin, 21, was seen standing next to Blanco, tampering with the pump.
When the officer drove around the parking lost he saw Abreu-Chapotin with a small orange drill in his hands and pulling on the pump, the report said.
The officer confronted the men, the report said, and observed Abreu-Chapotin attempting to hide a drill in his pocket. The officer then saw that the drill had a hex attachment, which got the screws in the pump.
Yuliesky Cespedes-Perez was also spotted in the vehicle by police and was ordered out of the vehicle an was detained, the report said. Three to four additional scanning devices were found on the ground near where Cespedes-Perez was sitting.
Police also noticed that the pump had not been closed all the way and that a gray scanning device was plugged into the credit card reading device on the pump, police said. The scanner that was found was the same as the ones found on the ground.
Police said in the arrest report that they believe Cespedes-Perez was sitting in the vehicle preparing the scanners while Blanco played look out and Abreu-Chapotin installed the scanners.
All three men were arrested.
Records also showed that Blanco had an active warrant out in Lee County.