Fuel distributor fined $470,000
January 11, 2008 by Karl Peskett
In a clear breach of not only statutory, but also moral laws, a fuel distributor has been fined over $400,000 for watering down its premium fuels.
Based in Northen NSW, Dojoo Pty Ltd, trading as Ballina Petroleum Distributors, and its managing director, Santo Pennisi, were convicted of 28 separate breaches of the Trade Practices Act, after successful prosecution by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The breaches happened between September 14 2004 and June 22 2007 when Dojoo sold about two million litres of diluted petrol in its Lead Replacement, Premium and Ultimate range by mixing it with regular unleaded fuel. Only after a tip-off, from a whistleblower on a TV current affairs program, was the matter investigated.
Mr Pennisi, who is one of four company directors, admitted to masterminding the scam to compete with retailing giants Coles and Woolworths who entered the petrol market.
Not only did he order tanker drivers to fill the wrong tanks, he also told admin staff to falsify company accounting records. The other possibility was of damage to high performance engines which rely on higher octane fuel to prevent detonation.
Justice John Logan of the Federal Court in Brisbane said, “Mr Pennisi must have known through his experience as a mechanic that such damage was likely. The consumers were in a position of vulnerability. A consumer is an ordinary Australian…they were relying on the labelling present on the bowser.”
Dojoo Pty Ltd was fined $400,000 and Mr Pennisi was instructed to pay a personal fine of $70,000. If it wasn’t for Dojoo’s attrition through a $200,000 contribution to a driving school set up by charity, the court said that the penalties would have been much stiffer.
Print it: 
What a PENnISi head!
^^Haaaaaaaa couldn’t have put it better myself !
Should have gone to jail [NOT gaol] and be shut down.
Its cheating the tax dept. and cheating the customer, thats simply not on.
Got off to light
Cheers
F-0
Serves him right.
470k might not be much for him. He should have his liscence taken off.
This is rather old “news”……
I read about this weeks ago.
so which petrol stations or brands are affected?
BP I think.
This is seriously ancient news! Either way, it stinks.
http://www.news.com.au/courier.....02,00.html
Wow a major brand eh?
That sucks
See, this is the sort of thing that can kill me engine, if u tune a car to 98 RON fuel and u put in a bad batch and u hammer it, you will do some serious damage, people like this idiot don’t seem to think about that
Yep I know what your saying Alborz….maybe he may get a couple of engine bills from it!
Idiot!
Just remembered, some years ago a Victorian distributor was using heating oil or kero and mixing it with diesel, and hence escaping the excise.
I think he went for a few million.
So the Queenslander’s idea was not that original :)
And there were many servos in Melbourne selling 25% or greater ethanol blends a few years ago, some cars didn’t make it out into the street.
As long as there are people, there will be scammers……
He has sold substandard fuel to 40,000+ people (guesstimate)
A $10 a head fine is a joke for the immediate and longterm damage this idiot has caused.
I run my old Subarus on PULP,they are better on it,hope I have never paid for regular but I think I would know straight away as loss of smooth idling & driveability especially when cold would be evident.
I hate these scum bags that have penalties reduced in exchange for \”community sponsorship programs\”.
It allows them to misrepresent themselves to the community as being good corporate citizens when the complete opposite is true.
Ha ha Mr Pen1sehead…stiffer fine….sorry.
We had a similar thing in the UK where Supermarket chains sold contaminated fuel. Thousands of cars broke down with damaged Knock sensors, the companies paid up claims but merely increased fuel prices to compensate their losses. The dear old punter loses out again.
a few of the smaller servos here sell lower grade fuels, i got stuch and had to fill up at one of these, and my car ran like shit, i ended up taking into to work, draining all the fuel out of the tank, clearing the lines, and then re filling, this time with premium unleaded, since then its only big servos with premium for me. Never used BP though, there always like 2 cents more here than anywhere else
a major manufacturer did a big test on fuel in australia many moons ago(bout 4years i think) and the geneal consensus was that fuel being sold in australia in general is rubbish and that advertised RON was between 1 and 4 points higher than what was comming out of the pump, at the time ours was the second worse of all developing nations that this particular manufacturer was selling into.
Yes this guy is a dudder and should be locked up, but also remember that the fuel you are buying generally (even the “performance fuels”)from the servo are crap to start with
a bloke i used to work with once told me a tale of his mate who once carried fuel for woolworths servos.
after carrying their fuel he told of the inside of his tanker being stained purple which suggested they were weakening it and putting in some dye to bring the colour right