Found out my neighbor's basement was a grow op after asking about the power bill

Last winter in Spokane, I noticed his electric bill was triple mine for a 2-bedroom house and jokingly asked if he was mining crypto - he got real quiet and then the power company showed up 2 weeks later. Has anyone else stumbled into something random just by comparing utility numbers?

2 comments

2 Comments

sarah_hart1mo ago

My buddy in Portland asked his upstairs neighbor why his heat bill was so low in winter and the guy got all defensive. Turns out he had tapped into my friend's gas line for his own furnace. The utility company had to come out and cut the illegal connection while the neighbor was at work. We still joke about how he was basically paying to heat some stranger's apartment for two years.

the_stella1mo ago

Gotta gently push back on that story @sarah_hart. If your friend's heat was on and the bill was low, that actually sounds more like the neighbor was stealing someone else's gas, not tapping into your friend's line. Usually when someone steals your utility, your own bill goes up because the meter is reading both uses, not down. That's how the grow op guy got caught in Spokane, his crazy high bill tipped everyone off.