Re: Bipassing your meter
I had a situation like this just this past winter. A medical building (built in 1972) that I service was cited for stealing electricity and the POCO was looking for an estimated back-charge of around $16K claiming that statute of limitations would only allow them to estimate back for 6 years.
When the electrical service was originally built it was a 3 phase, 400 amp overhead service which entered at the rear of the building. The service came down the back side in rigid conduit into the building to a main disconnect switch, out the bottom into a trough where 3 (very old) meter sockets were installed, very neatly, above the trough. Only the first socket had a meter installed in it. I guess, as new tenants came into the building, new breaker panels were neatly installed near the respective meter pans for 1st floor, 2nd floor and basement, and feeder conduits ran from the bottom of each panel into the common trough.
The meter reader would probably have never picked up on this except that some unnamed geniuses piped into the sides of the two remaining meter pans for breaker panels that they added. When I rebuilt the service I found the two remaining meter pans jumped out with # 10 wire. I wish I had a digital camera to show this here on the forum. The sad part about this is that the someone at the POCO had to know about this or why else would they put the tag on the meters? I not only installed new 3 phase meter sockets but had to install locks on the troughs below.