If your favorite restaurant is running low on cooking oil, there is a group of thieves lurking around Atlanta to blame.
Surveillance footage has shown thieves taking used cooking oil from restaurants, one most notably coming from Divan restaurant in Midtown Atlanta. Not only are the thieves hurting restaurants, but they are also causing spills, threatening the water supply, and causing car crashes.
In July 2023, a 17-year-old slid off her motorcycle after rolling past a patch of cooking oil on the street, and the same spill caused a crash that same morning.
Chamblee police caught a man on video stealing oil from a Pig-N-Chik and charged him with stealing more than $900 worth of their oil.
Another instance showed three men transferring oil into a construction tanker in October 2023. An investigator said it contained about 8,000 gallons of oil worth $39,000.
When Doraville police asked the men if the oil was stolen, they denied it. The police could only charge the men with trespassing because they didn’t have enough evidence to charge them with theft.
Police are also still trying to find two men who stole cooking oil from a Chick-fil-A in Athens.
The National Renderers Association estimated that up to $75 million worth of used cooking oil is stolen a year.
