Within four hours, thieves apparantly came to a Paterson, NJ household, and stole their 10 foot diameter inflatable pool.
And they appear to have stolen the 1000 gallons of water in the pool, too - as no sign of it was found where the pool had been.
So, how would the Teeming Millions solve this quandary?
Me, I’m wondering how they could have walked all the elephants from Ringling Bro.s through the neighborhood without any of them trumpeting. 
A hose wide and long enough to drain the water quickly into the storm system? 
ETA: Maybe with some kind of hand pump to start the siphon going?
They brought a pump and siphoned the water off into a nearby sewer or storm drain.
Sorry, I just can’t think of a good smart ass answer … um, how about aliens?
Jello. I’m just not sure about which flavor.
And if lieu isn’t sure, where are we?
Come on - if it were that simple, surely the police would have suggested it. (nodnodnodnodnodnod) 
Seriously, not all neighborhoods have storm drains. I’d expect them in Northern NJ, but I can’t be sure of it.
Okay… Waterfelon.
Alright, you win!
The pool was stolen by SpongeBob - but not deliberately. He was walking through the neighborhood, and was feeling a bit dehydrated… He saw the pool, and being parched, decided it was prefect for a quick sit-down. He soaked up all the water in the pool, and in the process expended to roughly 10 feet around, himself. When he got up to move on, the now-empty pool was stuck to his expanded butt, and he walked off with it still clinging to his backside.
Some couple miles down teh road, someone has found an empty but otherwise undamagd inflatable pool lying on the sidewalk…
And the jello theory works because all the thieves had to do was eat it, there’s always room for jello.
My first thought on reading that story this morning was that it was not some rampant gang of pool thieves running loose, but rather someone they know playing a joke on them.
As for what happened to the water, my best guess: hairdryer.
How long would it take 1000 gallons of water to soak into the ground?
I think we’re looking for a crimson haired woman with a red trench coat and fedora, who’s face is always just out of sight.
Sir, I salute you.
So, I did the math and the pool was big enough to hold 1000 gallons or maybe even 1500, depending on how high “hip-high” is. That’s 4-6 tons of sloshy goodness. No way two guys in a truck are gonna haul that away. The siphon idea is pretty questionable, but a home sump pump can handle that kind of water in about an hour.
Now, the best way to steal a pool would be to just deflate it, let the water run out (into those poor people’s basement), then roll it up and run. Using a sump pump would require a lot of extra work and risk of being caught – the only reason you’d do it is if you’d wanted the water. But 1000 gallons of water is (as far as I can tell) only about $8.00 or $10.00 even in New Jersey. Hardly seems worth the effort. Still, if I were these people, I’d check to see if any of their neighbors has a newly filled pool or freshly watered lawn. Failing that, I’d check their basement for about six inches of standing water.
It’s about the equivalent of running the garden hose full out for about three hours. Filled their 10 foot diameter pool to 2-2 1/2 feet deep. Assuming it was spilled out over a fairly small area, it’d be the equivalent of maybe a six inch rainfall. That would make a pretty big mud puddle. Even after a few hours on a 90 degree day, you’d be able to see that the ground was damper than it should have been.
What could you possibly do with an empty pool? Of course you want to steal it with the water.
Let us, for a minute, consider that alternative. That the owners of the pool are making this up. That they stole the pool themselves. What for? What is there to gain from it? Insurance?
The other possibility, is a student prank or something of the sort. In that case, all bets are off. If they were nerdy enough, there are no limits to what could have happened.
The easy way to empty a pool (the one I would use if I were stealing one) is to step on a side and let it overflow. That leaves, of course, a mess of water right where the pool was. There is no good reason to use a hose, a pump or anything else to quickly empty a pool.
sooooo, I am going for student prank,
To put this in a little perspective, 3000 gallons fills a box 15’X15’X3’. This is the size of the drop tank my fire department routinely sets up at a rural fire. If we drain the full tank, we can do it in 4 minutes, and 2 hours after the fact you’d never know that a minor river even flowed there.
Unless the thieves had a 5" hose and a fire truck to pump it, they’d be there all night with garden hoses trying to get a siphon going.
My bet is they deflated the pool where it sat, and carted the pool away.