The gas guzzlers who syphoned thousands of dollars of fuel from a local gas station last month were caught in Yavapai County this weekend allegedly doing the same thing. They had been doing it for years around the country, the authorities said. 

The two-man heist crew syphoned more than 400 gallons of diesel fuel from the gas pumps at Farmers Convenience Store, 49301 W. Papago Road around 1:30 a.m. March 6. 

Owner and Maricopa resident Jack Sulaiman said security footage caught a black Cadillac Escalade and a white Dodge Ram utility truck driving up to his Hidden Valley fuel pumps. The Escalade driver disabled the pumps and the Ram driver drained them, Sulaiman had theorized. 

It appeared the thieves used 9-volt batteries to “short the wires and open up the dispenser” before spending nearly an hour and a half hemorrhaging gasoline into a large fuel tank in the truck, Sulaiman said then. 

On Sunday, Sulaiman got a call from Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office saying the two men had been arrested Saturday night.  

“One of their deputies caught them,” he told InMaricopa Wednesday. “They caught the guys in the same vehicles and confirmed their plates.”  

YCSO Saturday night received a tip about two suspicious vehicles in Humboldt. A sheriff volunteer “recognized that the description matched vehicles involved in multiple recent fuel thefts in the area and updated the responding deputies,” according to a department statement. 

By the time deputies arrived, the vehicles had left the scene. The Dodge Ram truck was later found driving on State Route 69 and was pulled over. 

“The two men, 36 and 42 years of age, were arrested for felony theft and criminal damage. They are suspected of stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of gasoline from several different gas stations in Yavapai County. They are also suspected of being involved in fuel thefts since at least 2019 in several different states. Detectives believe the suspects used a homemade device to steal the gas,” according to the statement.