ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida authorities said that custom-built trucks with concealed trap doors are being used to steal hundreds of gallons of fuel from gasoline stations, WKMG-TV reports. Authorities also think that the thefts might be linked to an organized crime ring that is targeting stations.

“My concern is with homeland security,” Police County Sheriff Grady Judd told the TV station. “Someone can pull up to a store during business hours and steal hundreds of gallons of gas and simply move on to the next station.”

The police arrested three men in conjunction with several of the thefts. In both crimes, investigators found that the men had similar custom-built trucks that were used to steal the gasoline.

Last week, deputies saw one of the men perpetrating the crime from two stations. The man pulled over near a gasoline station’s underground storage tank, raised the trailer’s hood and fiddled with the engine. Meanwhile, the trap door covered the fact that fuel was being pumped into the tanks, police said. One thief, who authorities say might have begun to steal fuel in January, might have taken as much as 10,000 gallons of gasoline a week to re-sell at his towing company.

“It was broad daylight; nobody knew that’s what he was doing,” sheriff's representative Carrie Rodgers said. “He was that good at it.”

This is not the first time that thieves have tried to steal gasoline from underground storage tanks. Members of a theft ring operating in Florida were arrested in June 2005 for using trucks that could siphon upwards of 1,000 gallons of fuel undetected. Also in June 2005, a man in Cottondale, Alabama, was severely burned in an explosion while allegedly trying to siphon hundreds of gallons of fuel from a station.

NACS has an online fact sheet on gasoline theft.