Happened to us once. Huge bill. It turns out the reader put the decimal point one spot to the right. An order of magnitude will scare anyone. My wife hit the roof when she saw the bill as we coincidently just had central AC installed. A phone call fixed it. The gal actually had me read her...
Leave it out in the open with a plasma cutter right next to it andfireworks inside. I just read about this in the news. Two theives got early retirement.