The police were alerted about the van by a bus driver who was at the same petrol station while the van driver was suspiciously filling up three large plastic bins with diesel.
Officers immediately tracked down the van, which was unsurprisingly found to be leaking diesel and had left a trail of it on the road.
To make matters worse, the driver was found to have paid for the fuel with his employer’s card – even though he had purchased the diesel for his own person use.
Besides the obvious dangers of carrying an unsecure load of diesel in the van, police say that it was also likely that the diesel would have been spilled during the unloading process.
Moreover, a technical inspection on the van uncovered so many failures that Berlin police said it “would probably be easier to list what was still roadworthy about the vehicle”.
As a consequence, the van has been taken off the road until all of the defects have been repaired, “if that’s still possible,” adds Berlin Police.
Finally, after the driver’s employer was notified about the fraudulent use of the company’s card, it was discovered that the driver had pulled off the same stunt just days earlier.