How is this crime committed?

Spigot on the side of the house?



Never mind. That still doesn't make sense. I have no idea.

Serious? He broke the lock on the meter which would allow his neighbor to bypass the meter when drawing public water. The same as if he broke an electric meter. He doesn't have to get the water himself, but he clearly was an accomplice (if convicted).

Maybe the other guy was out of town or something. Or maybe it's a remote, rural property and no evidence the absentee owner was in on it.

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So, you think he and the 'victim' were working together? There was only one arrest. It's also weird because water here is cheap. My water bill is 40 a month.

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That's a about what it is in Trenton. But it's a big issue here. Mostly because water employees were using trucks and parts from the utility to repair and hook up water lines (sans meters) to customers and collect payment in cash. LINK

In this case even if the home owner claims that he didn't know about it, if it can be proven that the neighbor broke the lock on the meter than he could be caught for the theft.

"If" the neighbor was truly innocent, then maybe the guy wanted to fill his swimming pool but didn't want to use his well water / city water and thought he was being slick by using the neighbor's.

He would have to tap the line behind his neighbor's meter otherwise he would be taking off the main which would be harder to detect.

I saw a recent news item where a town is putting in digital water meters that can show the water company usage in real time. It can look for odd usage amounts that are usually a sign of leaks or theft and alert the customer right away instead of them being shocked by a monthly bill that shows 10X normal usage.

I was describing your first scenario which is water diversion after it was measured at the neighbor's meter.

The second scenario would likely be a data mapping error in the billing computer that has the meter number assigned to the wrong billing address. This would be an inside job or maybe a good computer hack.

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OK, so I need to get one thing clear that the article did not cover.

Was the actual water from person 'A' redirected to the home of person 'B'? Or was this a case of person 'B's normal water usage within his home charged to the meter of person 'A.'?

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There really isn't a reason to break the lock on a water meter unless you want to bypass the meter "reading" what water is used. From there it doesn't matter who used the water.