Not "making crap up". You did say it...
No, I didn't say what you posted, you made that scenario up and it's quite a leap from what I actually wrote, lol.
I check the tanks every time I fly, visually, I know what I start with and I calculate how much fuel the flight will use, I used to do it manually, now Foreflight does it automatically. If you're a pilot, you should do that too. The fuel gages are nice, but I don't trust them, you shouldn't either.
I fly a plane with a fuel totalizer, I trust that more than the gauges, it gets adjusted, if necessary before I start. If I'm not able to land with at least an hours worth of fuel I stop and get more.
This guy took off with no fuel. I have no idea if he looked at his gas gauges or not, but it was an older plane and I'm betting they weren't that accurate. Regardless, I doubt he looked at the tanks to see how much fuel he had.
How does that happen? I don't know, maybe he never checked, or maybe he left the plane the day before with more than enough fuel to make the 15 minute flight to Stow for cheap gas and someone drained his tanks before he got there. Plausible, but we will probably never know.
Just about every instructor I've flown with will visually check the tanks and the oil level if they weren't there when I checked the oil. The gas level, doesn't matter if they were right behind me when I checked it visually, they want to see it too. Why do you suppose that is? Hint: It's not because they think I'm a moron.