Following FBI investigations, Jeffers admitted to billing his employer for more than 900 phantom fill-ups that totaled $510,465, according to the press release. On Nov. 9, he was given a prison sentence of two years and six months.
U.S. Attorney Moore Capito said Jeffers “exploited the trust placed in him by his employer and turned a company resource into a personal revenue stream,” according to a July 30 press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Inside the phantom gas station scheme
Jeffers worked as a delivery driver for a Wood County industrial gas provider. The business had a distribution site where trucks filled up their tanks before going on delivery trips, but drivers still received fuel credit cards in case they needed to fill up off-site. Those off-site fill-ups were the focus of Jeffers’ fraud scheme.
Although his delivery routes usually didn’t need any off-site refueling, Jeffers ran the fuel credit cards through accounts he had set up on online payment platforms, each posing as a legitimate service station.
The scheme bypassed a standard safeguard called Merchant Category Code restrictions, which fleet programs use to limit where a card can be charged. By dressing his accounts to look like ordinary fueling stops, Jeffers moved cash from corporate accounts straight into his own pocket.
A growing problem for fleet businesses
Jeffers’ case is not an isolated incident, as fuel card fraud is becoming more rampant. According to a 2025 WEX white paper on the rise of fuel card fraud, fleets lose 5% to 10% of their yearly fuel consumption to theft or misallocation, with fraud levels climbing as high as 12% in 2024.
The paper also highlighted the significant impact that fuel card fraud can have on the profitability of fleet businesses. “Fraud is not a victimless crime. Every dollar stolen through deception is a dollar taken from a business, its employees and ultimately the community it serves,” Capito said in the July 30 press release.
On Sept. 23, two Georgia men were indicted for impersonating a Michigan trucking company’s identity to obtain commercial fuel cards, racking up more than $760,320 in unpaid fuel purchases that accrued interest across 23 states, FreightWaves reports.
