FBI Says 4 Suspects Tapped Oil Line for $4-Million Worth

At 2 o’clock on a January morning almost a year ago, an FBI agent named Joseph Schaal watched from a hiding place as an oil tanker turned off the Twentynine Palms Highway and headed down a dirt road in Morongo Valley with its headlights off.

As the truck stopped a few hundred yards off the highway, Schaal was close enough to watch two men get out. He saw them climb to the top of the tanker and open a lid. One of them, shining a flashlight into the tanker, was giving the orders.

“I want the oil up to this mark,” Schaal quoted him as saying.

The FBI surveillance was part of an investigation into the theft of more than 10 million gallons of crude oil over a three-year period from an interstate pipeline owned by a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Co.

On Tuesday the investigation led to the arrests of four San Bernardino County residents charged with tapping into the pipeline and systematically siphoning off more than $4-million worth of crude oil for resale to independent refineries.

Calling the case one of the largest thefts of crude oil in U.S. history, Assistant U.S. Atty. Fred D. Heather described a sophisticated scheme in which the defendants allegedly leased their own oil tanker trucks and passed themselves off as a legitimate oil company.

The FBI disclosed in one court document that the defendants even had their own underground pipeline connecting to the interstate pipeline owned by Four Corners Pipeline Co., an Arco subsidiary.

Arrested at their homes Tuesday and later released on $50,000 bail were Mose Allen Geter, 44, of Morongo Valley; two sons, Mose Allen Geter Jr., 25, of Palm Desert, and Christopher Darrin Geter, 23, of Palm Springs, and Konrad Edi Prager, 35, of Morongo Valley.

Although he died earlier this year in St. Louis, James Wade Stone, formerly of Indio, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator. He allegedly leased the trucks and set up companies under the names of Octane Petroleum and Cherokee Oil Co.,

According to an 11-count federal indictment charging conspiracy and interstate theft, the elder Geter leased land next to the underground Four Corners pipeline, which pumps 50,000 barrels of crude oil a day between Long Beach and Red Mesa, Utah.

The indictment charged that Geter and his two sons were involved with Prager in establishing their own line to tap into the Four Corners pipeline. The bootleg line ran underground about 200 yards to a metal shed on the 40 acres of high desert land leased by Geter, the indictment said.

While Stone allegedly obtained the leases for the trucks, Geter was accused of paying a driver, his two sons were charged with loading and driving the trucks, and Prager also was accused of doing some of the driving.

Company’s Probe

Although the indictment itself gave no hint of how the investigation began, an FBI affidavit filed by Schaal for a search of the Morongo Valley property last January disclosed that the FBI became involved after a probe by Four Corners into unusually heavy oil losses on the pipeline that at first could not be explained.

Beginning in September, 1984, a Four Corners engineer in Long Beach, Myron C. Howard, began investigating the losses, conducting pressure tests on various stretches of the pipeline and noticing periodic pressure losses indicating systematic tapping.

According to Schaal’s affidavit, Howard determined that someone was taking about 100 to 200 barrels of oil at a time out of the pipeline, about enough to load one tank truck and trailer. By December, 1984, company investigators working with the FBI had spotted the point of the pipeline tap and observed a Cherokee Oil Co. truck at the Morongo Valley location, the affidavit said.

On the advice of the FBI laboratory in Washington, Howard added a trace chemical to the crude oil flowing through the pipeline. Besides Schaal’s own surveillance last Jan. 7, other FBI agents followed a loaded Cherokee Oil Co. truck to Long Beach the following day.

Sample Provided

According to the FBI affidavit, the truck unloaded its crude oil at MacMillan Ring Free Oil Co. in Long Beach. Employees of that firm provided the FBI with a sample of oil from the truck, and it was found to contain the chemical trace, the affidavit said.

The land allegedly leased by Geter is on the edge of the Big Morongo Regional Park, a wildlife reserve, at the end of a dirt road called Pioneer Drive in the sparsely populated community of Morongo Valley, about 100 miles east of Los Angeles.

Geter and his three co-defendants appeared Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate George L. Martin in Yucca Valley and could not be reached for comment later. They are scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate John Kronenberg in Los Angeles on Monday for formal arraignment.