From : Jim Strohm                                 30 Nov 97  09:40:22
 Subj : Re: Fool Electric Meter? HOW!!                                          
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From: Jim Strohm <jstrohm@txeas.net>

There are lots of ways, and they are all illegal and all depend
on the electric company never inspecting your equipment.

If you have overhead wires, remove the electrical tape from the
cable clamp bolts, then attach a set of jumper cables to the
clamp bolts.  Free power.  Of course, it is very visible
and potentially lethal.  I had a friend die from fooling with
the service connection.

I've been told -- but have never experimented with it -- that
a strong magnet can be placed next to the electrical meter
in the right place, and the meter movement will be slowed by
the magnet.  The power companies are ALL wise to this trick, tho.

There are a number of ways to tamper with the meter, but all are
obviously detectible and easily prosecutable.  Don't do this.

Here's why NOT to tamper with the meter -- the power company can
search its billing database for significant changes in power
consumption.  Why?  There's hackers at the power company too, and
they get bored like you and me.  Also, the power company can meter
its main lines, and frequently does, for maintenance reasons.
If they see a significant "leak" (billing totals don't equal
delivered electricity), they go looking for a problem. Could be
a short, could be theft of service.  They can, and likely WILL,
see that you're doing something.

Bottom line: Electricity is pretty cheap.  It's really not worth
stealing.  If you are using enough juice that it costs you, you
really need to find a way to make money with your activities.
If you have a horticulture business (nudge nudge wink wink), your
suddenly larger electrical bill WILL be a tipoff to your activity.
And this will show up on a routine database search.  So maybe
instead of stealing electricity, you might want to get a generator
with a good muffler, and take your activities off the electrical
mains.  There are a lot of resources available on the survivalist
newsgroups telling how to use off-main power sources.  If you
can't find anything there, drop me an email (unmunge my (R)eply-to
and leave a REAL return address) and I'll turn you on to a couple
of suppliers of generators. (Anybody can email me for this.)

Or you could go to http://www.harborfreight.com

They sell a lot of interesting tools, and occasionally have some kewl
toys useful for a wide variety of electronique projects.

Have fun, and next time leave a decipherable email address.