As it turns out copper wire and heavy metals aren't the poorest thing Bay Area thieves are ripping off these days. As CBSLocal reports this week, bandits in San Francisco have started knocking off local cooking oil recyclers.

Apparently the price of "yellow grease" as it's called in the biofuels industry has shot up from six cents per gallon to 50 cents per gallon, driving some slick thieves to start up their own grease recycling operations. In the Richmond, grease-laden restaurant Belly Burgers caught the slick thieves on security camera as they pulled up behind the restaurant and helped themselves to the goods, sucking it up out of storage barrels in what looks like an industrial strength shopvac. One biofuels industry insider tells CBS, that even private owners of biofuel-driven vehicles have taken to stealing grease to fuel their own cars.

CBS5 has the video report:

[RichmondSF]
[CBS5]