also, a federal investigation is now underway into that crash that killed a family of four in pleasanton. why the electric car that they were driving is being looked into. and are you willing to sign up for a program where you're charged roughly $0.03 for every mile you drive? what's in it for you? welcome back, everyone. the news at 530 starts right now. thanks so much for joining us. i'm janelle wang and i'm raj mathai. it was a fiery and deadly crash. this is on a notorious stretch of road in fremont. according to neighbors, we have surveillance video that we're going to freeze right at the point of impact. we want to warn you, it might be disturbing to watch. let's bring in nbc's ian cull. the car smashed into this tree in fremont at 1230 this morning. we obtained surveillance video that shows how it happened. you'll see the car coming from top left, driving fast and smashing into the tree. the sedan was nearly

torn in half and was immediately engulfed in flames. a fremont police officer who was in the area responded within seconds with the fire extinguisher, and good samaritans tried to help. they were able to pull one of the men to safety before the car reignited. someone came up and said, where's the driver? officer said, this is the driver . and then the guys that knew that was the driver said, that's not the driver. and they immediately ran to the car. but then the car had burst into flames. well, the video shows firefighters responding about 6.5 minutes after the crash. the witnesses say it felt much longer. he also says more traffic calming measures are needed on fremont boulevard to make drivers slow down. every night. people are speeding and racing down the street. that used to be a one way street each way. and now, ever since they pulled it back to two lanes, it's constant honking, it's constant speeding. the car hit a tree outside of bogey's discount pet food and supplies, which was damaged from the debris on impact. you hear about stuff like this all the time, and i

mean, i've been in a few car accidents of myself, but like, this is something else. this is this is crazy. the father of the man who died looked on as the scene was cleared late this morning. he was distraught but told us in spanish he believes firefighters could have pulled his son from the car. no one else from the family wanted to talk. police did not know the condition of the man who was pulled from the wreck. the coroner will identify the other in fremont, ian cull nbc bay area news. a deadly crash in the east bay is now being investigated by the ntsb. it happened last month in pleasanton. police say an electric vehicle crashed into a large tree and burst into flames. the driver, turun jorge, his wife and their two children were killed. the car belonged to george's coworker. before the crash, that coworker actually had filed a complaint about the car. a vinfast vf8 complaining about steering issues. it is not

clear yet if that was a factor in the crash. vinfast has released a statement saying in part, vinfast and nhtsa, the national highway traffic safety administration, are working cooperatively to determine the cause of the tragic crash in pleasanton. nhtsa is not investigating vinfast. the pleasanton police are currently investigating the cause of the accident and will share their findings when their work is completed. well if you drive a driver an electric car. excuse me? you're not paying taxes on gasoline. the state now says so many people are going electric. the state is losing money, so it's coming up with an idea to get that money back. here's nbc's marianne favro caltrans says with more people driving electric vehicles, fewer people are buying gas and gas tax revenues are plummeting. so now the state is looking at new ways to pay for road maintenance with more than 30 million registered passenger vehicles in california

, the state says it shells out more than $8 billion a year to maintain the roads. those cars drive on. much of that cost is paid from money collected here at the pump from gas taxes. but because so many californians now own electric vehicles, the gas tax money is starting to dry up. potentially ten years from now, we'll see, a $4.4 billion loss in revenue because of these issues, which is why caltrans wants to instead charge drivers per mile and is now enrolling people in a six month pilot program to test out the concept. and what's unique about this pilot is this time we'll be collecting actual revenue from participants. so why would you participate in a program that charges you about $0.03 for every mile you drive? caltrans says it will waive gas tax fees and give participants up to $400. drivers would track their miles by taking a photo of their odometer or using a transponder placed in their car, but some

have big concerns about being tracked. i would not be happy with that, especially putting a device in my car. i think that's also invasive. any data that's shared is, totally at the control of the participant they choose how much data, the data is processed by our account manager, and it does not come to caltrans. all that caltrans would see is the number of miles. it's not going to ever see any of your location information. giovanni fletcher drives an electric vehicle and is not happy. the state is considering charging by mile. i would be very upset because i think it just kind of retracts the incentive that they were trying to get people to purchase electric electrical vehicles, she says. she'd like to pump the brakes on the road charge program. if you'd like to participate in the pilot program , you can sign up on caltrans website now. participants will be different rates. some will be charged a flat rate per mile and others will be charged based on

the fuel efficiency of their vehicle. in san jose, marianne favro. nbc bay area news. drivers that are paying for gas may soon see a change at the gas pump. the biden administration has a new plan to lower gas prices. it announced today that it's releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from a northeast reserve. it's part of an effort to lower prices at the pump this summer, tapping gasoline reserves is one of the few actions a president can take by himself to try and control inflation. oil prices have risen due to opec cutting production and fears the israel-hamas war could spark a broader middle east conflict that disrupts supply. prices at the pump right now are averaging 359 per gallon nationwide. it's 518 a gallon here in california, the highest in the nation. strangers show up for a pool party in a homeowner's backyard. here's the thing the homeowner didn't authorize their backyard for rent. i'm consumer investigator chris chmura something else for

homeowners to worry about. next i'm chief meteorologist jeff ranieri. i'll get you the latest update on how our reservoirs are doing. plus, the roller coaster ride we're in for on the temperatures ts week.hi

have a pool, you could actually rent one from someone who does. think of it like an airbnb for pools. and even if you're not interested in taking the plunge, a homeowner in the south bay is warning everyone you could end up in the deep end. anyway, here's our consumer investigator chris kamara. good evening. a south bay viewer opened our eyes to how easily an imposter can take pictures of your home off the internet and list your backyard for rent. it was so easy. we did it ourselves a couple times. you need to watch out for this. eric thune put his los gatos home up for sale and

moved to santa barbara before it sold. well, of all the things that can go sideways in a home sale, he did not expect this. i get a text from my pool guy saying, do you know there's people at your pool? obviously i was quite shocked and said, no, i didn't. his security camera snapped. these photos of this family. eric's pool guy then put one of the strangers on the phone. i said, what the heck are you doing on my property, you're trespassing. he said, no, i rented this house on swimply. demand for rentals hasn't cooled off at all. swimply made a splash as a start up five years ago. it lets people rent pools, decks, backyards and places to hold parties by the hour. some owners and swimply are earning over six digits a year. well, somehow eric's pool ended up on swimply for $46 an hour. an imposter with the username eric daniel pulled photos from the real eric's real estate listing and apparently enticed this family to book. eric informed

them they'd both been duped and told him to leave. i think he was probably just as shocked as i was. next, eric tried to contact swimply to get them to pull down the imposters listing asap and you know nothing happened. eric contacted us, we contacted swimply. we also booked a swim at eric's, but the bogus eric canceled on me and stopped responding when i revealed i'm a reporter within 24 hours, swimply responded it refunded the strangers who booked eric's pool and took down the bogus listing. swimply said it removed it in a timely manner . i don't think 24 hours is a timely manner. eric had one question for swimply how could somebody post a listing without verifying that they actually own the property? we wondered that too. swimply told us any prospective host can create a listing on swimply. we want it to be convenient for hosts to get started on our platform, it said. eric's case was a very

rare instance in which our processes did not correctly identify a fraud attempt prior to a customer booking. i don't believe that one bit. to test out what swimply was telling us, we enlisted our intern, grace. hi, grace. hi, kris. where do you go to school? uc berkeley. do you own a home? no would you like to try to list somebody else's for us? sure. we picked a place 300 miles away. a colleague's home in la swimply set up page recommended we just grab photos from zillow. we did. within just a few minutes. grace's rooftop party went live. swimply told us. unverified listings aren't immediately visible to users or bookable, but grace's was immediately visible and bookable. swimply told us its fraud detection processes can remove bogus listings within 24 to 48 hours. we waited 96 hours, then checked in on grace's rooftop party. so is your listing still active? yes. and did swimply ever ask you whether you actually own the

place? no. or that you have authorization to rent it? no. nothing. nothing. simultaneously, our colleague in la listed our boss's pool in san jose. same result, no verification, but instantly listed and bookable. our listings were up for weeks with no verification. we shared our results with swimply. it acknowledged some fraud slipping through their checks. now it's making changes. new host verification, phone calls, additional id and bank info checks, plus a new button to report suspicious listings. like eric's. it's a monstrous liability issue, he says. look out for imposters trying to profit from your home. put a camera in your backyard. here's another idea try to pull down any photos of your home that are on real estate websites like redfin or zillow. ask your real estate agent to turn off what's called syndication or contact those websites directly. eric contacted us online. you can to

scan the qr code on screen right now to fill out our consumer complaint form online. wow. i didn't even know that service was available. and i also didn't know our boss had a pool. so have you not have you not been invited to the pool party? i have, i know where i'm going to. hint where i'm going to go this summer. oh man. how you doing? some pool weather tomorrow. still hanging on today. it's great. tonight was nice outside. we have we fast forwarded right into summer. we had lots of 80s out there and as we head through this week, numbers are slowly and surely going to be dropping on down, eventually getting us to a cold blast this weekend, which will get you more on. but let's look at this view tonight. this is postcard perfect out here in san francisco. you got the bay bridge city skyline and unlimited visibility. this has come to your tv to check this one out. just really nice to see that tonight. now when it comes to those temperatures. yes it was warm out here, but not quite

enough. good enough really here for records and thankfully so we hit 88 here in concord. warm day about ten degrees above our average. we would have had to hit 100 to reach a record today. santa rosa 86. and that's shy of the record of 95. and san francisco 71. but we would have had to hit 90 today to get up to record territory. so no records today. but we are looking at more warm weather tomorrow from this area. high pressure that's building here just off to the north. but the other thing we're also seeing at the same time is this system just kind of sneaking down the backside of that area, high pressure. and that's going to help to drop temperatures a few degrees tomorrow and even bring back some fog for the morning. so i think overall, tomorrow still is going to be very enjoyable and just not quite as warm. so as you roll it through tomorrow morning's forecast, we're going to start it off with lots of low 50s here throughout the bay area, 52 here in the south bay over to san francisco, 52 as well, and 51 through the north bay. temperatures as you move through the afternoon, going to drop about 4 to 8 degrees. so i

think that's going to put us back more into a comfortable range tomorrow. if today was just kind of too hot for you, 81 here in concord, 78, livermore 78, san jose 74. palo alto low 70s up to redwood city. and you can see the trend as we get up to san francisco will be in the 60s and right here at the coastline. we're at 59. but everything i mean, every thing changes for us by saturday's forecast. we have this cold front sweeping across, and it looks like at this point, most areas are going to see about a 20 degree temperature drop. look at how things trend here in concord. we'll go down to 79 on thursday. by friday, 69 and saturday 67. i do see it boosting up here by sunday to 74. and for memorial day on monday will be at 76. and really riding in with some nice weather through next week. so we do get this cold blast in here for the start of the weekend. but it does get out of here, now no need to worry. we're not going to see any rainfall here as we head into saturday and when it comes to rainfall, i also wanted

to show you this tonight we are just sitting so incredibly here when it comes to those reservoirs. we are 99% of capacity marin water, 93% lexington. we haven't been able to say this many years here over the past decade, 94% of capacity, east bay mud, uvas at 95. now when you take a look at this state reservoirs a lot of the large ones, four of our largest reservoirs are now 93% of capacity. and when you also factor in all of these reservoirs, you see in this page here and compare it to the historical average, that's to date, everyone is reading 100% and or better. so this is really excellent to see, especially with some nice wet weather reservoirs are always kind of a place we can go to get some respite, some recreation, and it's really just going to be a nice spot to go to right here in san francisco. we're going to see 50s this upcoming weekend and through the inland valleys we'll go down to 72 here on friday, 67 on saturday. and then we rebound by memorial day. up

to 70 high 70s looks good for the holiday. it really does take that. glad it's not you know three days of 60s. yeah that's true. nice nice save on the back end. thank you thank you. thanks chef okay up next one of the giants top prospects is living up to the hype. he's been fun to watch these last several days. our giants insiders discuss the rise of luis matos. stay with us .

he's doing really well. luis matos. right place at the right time. the national league player of the week is the giants new center fielder. remember, jungwoo lee is out for the season with that injury. so the question is how good can matos be? let's bring in our giants insiders. biggest thing everyone's been talking about is luis matos, who just all of a sudden became an rbi machine. the youngest starting to drive in 11 runs over two games, our theme here is it sustainable? obviously driving in that many runs is not it's definitely not. but i do think like we're talking about him just as a player. he's always been one of my favorite prospects because it's just like such a beautiful right handed swing and everything comes easy to him.

and you just see how talented he is. there are red flags as well. you know, people are. people need to understand like he was not good in triple-a this year. so there are some things in his profile that you look at this season. he was good in the spring. he was not good in triple-a, he hasn't drawn a walk yet since coming back. and at some point that will come back to bite him. and i think in general with, with all these guys, i go back to what casey schmidt did last year in his first 12 games. i mean, remember, casey's first 12 games hit 383, a couple home runs. ops was about a thousand. we're probably doing every podcast we're talking about. casey, i know i wrote a story about is he here to stay, ultimately, teams figured out they could throw it out of the strike zone to him. i think matos is in a better spot. he fills that void of excitement, he has re-energized, i think, the fan base in a lot of ways. and look, giants fans are waiting for homegrown,

homegrown guys who they can buy their jersey. and matos was a lesser known of these prospects. but i think matos has, as good a shot as any of. i think he has a better shot than any of the other guys. we'll talk about, actually, and i think as they work with him and make some more adjustments, like he's going to be here to stay, i, i don't see any reason why it would fail for him. alex pavlovich knows his stuff. you could watch more of the giants talk by downloading the podcast. still to come french rail workers. they are now on strike. what they're demanding ahead of the olympics, and how it could impact things as the world prepares to descend on paris norman, bad news... i never graduated from med school. what? -but the good news is... xfinity mobile just got even better! now, you can automatically connect to wifi speeds

up to a gig on the go. plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. i gotta get this deal... i know... faster wifi and savings? ...i don't want to miss that. that's amazing doc. mobile savings are calling. visit xfinitymobile.com to learn more. doc?

british public figures, including prince harry and actor hugh grant, have filed a lawsuit against murdoch's newspapers. it's over the company's alleged phone hacking between the late 1990s and 2016, but the public figures are now trying to amend their lawsuit to include murdoch himself. the lawyers claim murdoch was personally aware of the efforts to cover up. today, a judge said claims against murdoch would effectively amount to a new lawsuit and cannot be folded into the current litigation. the case is expected

to go to trial in january. an update now from baltimore. the governor of maryland is congratulating the leaders of the ongoing effort to remove that cargo ship from the sight of that bridge collapse in late march. yesterday the ship was refloated and removed from the wreckage of the francis scott key bridge. we fast forwarded the camera here, the governor thanking everyone from the citizens of baltimore to the white house and congress for support in this recovery process . it's the question of the timeline. it is aggressive, but that's the reason we've got to move fast. but i think the thing that we've continued to show, if you look at this operation, is that we can do big things, we can accomplish aggressive timelines. that ship has been stuck for 55 days. six construction workers who were repairing potholes on the span of that bridge died. and all aboard. maybe not. french railway workers are on strike when the olympics begin this summer in paris, railway workers will have to work extra hours to

manage all the visitors, but they say the compensation they will get is not good enough. so they're striking the operator of rail traffic in paris is set to meet with unions tomorrow to try and come to an agreement. a lot more news ahead. jessica aguirre joins us now with what's coming up next. well, coming up now at six, a teenagers facing murder charges for a stabbing at an east bay safeway witnesses who were shopping tell us what they saw after a dispute turned deadly. also back on the map, the fix from google today following our report of a glitch on google maps that left an entire intersection and its businesses invisible on the app, plus a lot of people's gift card balances are just vanishing. turns out, a criminal syndicate could be to blame. i'm consumer investigator chris chmura. we're connecting the dots and we're not alone. we'll tell you about a new federal operation to shut down the scam and protect your balance. the news at six starts

right now. good evening, and thanks for being with us on this tuesday. i'm raj mathai, and i'm jessica aguirre. tonight a major tactic to take down an international fraud that quietly drains gift cards by the thousands here in the bay area and beyond. our. excuse me? investigators believe thieves are working together to steal your balance and send it overseas. let's bring in our consumer investigator, chris kamara, who's been really connecting the dots for months. and gift cards is a big deal because so many of us use them and we get lots of complaints about it. and yeah, we first showed you this a couple of months ago, a photograph that just really opened our eyes. we thought it was a one off. one man quietly arrested one night in one sacramento store with more than 5000 gift cards. this was not a one off, not even close. this is the video that piqued our curiosity. he fell to the ground and he had gift cards

like a pinata. just kind of flew out after this takedown at a target store, the sacramento district attorney charged ningning sun with attempted grand theft. investigators accused sun of quietly taking thousands of gift cards off store shelves, then putting them back. but only after someone tampered with them to steal the money. a shopper would later load on the cards. the way that this is done is very sophisticated. the cards are taken without any sort of value on them. they're tampered with in a way that is not detectable, and then they're reshelved. sun's case seemed unusual even to the deputies who arrested him. we weren't sure initially what he was doing when we were watching him on camera. but since then, police told me they seized almost 1900 cards from the two suspects. our teams combed through dozens of news reports. they located the suspect vehicle and found four huge bags full of gift cards and police reports coast to coast deputies in the