I have discovered a "Suicide lead" in a basement garage for two apartments. The shared garage had two socket outlets, one fed from each apartment for laundry purposes.

Mr Upstairs yanked the load the wire out of his meter and back-fed his apartment with the dodgy lead in the two sockets in the garage.

Mr Downstairs found it " a bit strange " when his power bill had doubled a few months earlier, but only voiced concern to the landlord when he noticed that the garage door opener stopped working when the strange lead was pulled out of his socket by the laundry machine in the garage.

The PoCo meter reader had read the meters 5 times ( 5 months ), looking straight at the yanked out 16mm phase cable with tape over the end, and didn't say a thing.

Epilogue : Mr Upstairs vacated said premises the same day. No forwarding adress. Mr Downstairs received cheque from PoCo