Man pleads guilty to stealing diesel fuel

HERMITAGE, Pa. (AP) — An asphalt and trucking company owner in eastern Ohio has pleaded guilty to retail theft for using a truck trailer with a hidden vacuum system to steal 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel from a western Pennsylvania convenience store.

Sentencing has not been scheduled for 57-year-old Larry Donaldson, of North Bloomfield, Ohio, but he has agreed to pay $10,150 in restitution.

Donaldson will forfeit the vacuum and trailer apparatus but will be allowed to keep his pickup under the deal struck Tuesday with Mercer County prosecutors. Police say Donaldson stole the fuel in April 2007 and two other times in 2005 by lowering a vacuum hose into underground storage tanks at the Tic Toc Food Mart BP station in Hermitage.

Prosecutors say Donaldson used the fuel himself.