Don't discount those plastic meter seals too fast. My utility used
them for years. We also paid the meter readers a bounty for each
broken seal they found. That's why they tugged just about every
plastic seal each time they read the meter. Each broken seal was
reported and our security team checked them out. Best catch was a
motel at the seashore. We had to put in a second meter (up on the
pole in a fake transformer can) to catch them red handed. Fines,
interest, penalties, costs of the investigation and of course all the
stolen energy.

In most cases high bills in a commercial location with multiple meters
is a mismatch between customer and meter. Second choice is
misinstalled wiring for loads such as outdoor lights, hall lights,
basement, back to back receptacles (now in different offices) or just
a landlord that doesn't know or care that subdividing space requires
new wiring.

My son had a similar problem in an apartment in NYC. Con Ed (and the
landlord) couldn't care less after he found out that an adjoining
apartment had some of his wiring. So he carefully explained to Con
Ed's legal department that his father was an expert witness for
utility operations and they had a talk with the landlord and stopped
hounding my son for back bills.

On Jun 7, 8:03 pm, mm wrote:
On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:48:42 -0400, John McGaw
wrote:

A decent electrician who knows what (s)he is looking for could probably
open the panel(s) and probably find any misdeeds but I wouldn't advise
you to do it. You might also want to check the seal on the meter housing
to see if it has been removed -- inside that housing would be an
excellent place to tap in for power.

I forgot about that. ARound here, the seals are those plastic label
tags with the wire coming out and in. One can cut one of those, do
what you want, and then stuff the stub back in and it will look as if
it hasn't been touched. DAMHIKT. So you'd have to pull on it sopme
to see if it has been tampered with.

BTW, the point of my tapped pay phone story was to show how hard it
can be to find a tap. Not that the phone guy couldn't have found it
if he had tried harder, or if he hadn't thought it was a broken wire
inside insulation where he couldn't see it.