I am well aware of their various duties. That doesn't detract from my point that enforcement by such an agency is a remarkably inefficient means of addressing the problem.
The Secret Service is a federal agency. They are arguably a step up the ladder from the FBI. Their people do not come cheap. In this case they are being deployed against scammers who are filling homemade tankers with gas ... not big fish. (fyi, the Secret Service really really doesn't like the SS acronym. I made that mistake in a memo once. They are the one US agency without cool initials.)
It is almost always better/cheaper to prevent a crime from happening by removing the opportunity. Without bringing in spreadsheets and US federal budget reports, having the CC industry deploy a technological solution is cheaper than investigating, trying, arresting and housing these criminals. Gas pumps are expensive units, require regular service, and each move thousands of dollars worth of gas every day. A few bucks for the chip reader is no great burden.
Thanks! There's not a lot of info on the Secret Service's financial side (at least I didn't see much in Wikipedia) so it's hard to assess what's a normal use of their resources.
