On October 26, 2026, local law enforcement authorities announced that a serving police constable has been formally arrested and charged in connection to a widespread alleged fuel embezzlement scheme tied to a misused department fuel access card. The accused, identified as 38-year-old Roberto Hoare, holds the official post of police fleet manager, a role that granted him routine administrative access to the agency’s fleet fueling resources.
The compromised fuel card was formally assigned to a marked police patrol vehicle that had been fully decommissioned and taken out of active service as far back as March 2026, leaving no legitimate operational reason for the card to have been used at any point in the subsequent seven months. Audits of the card’s transaction history show nearly 1,800 gallons of fuel were dispensed under its unauthorized use, with a total estimated market value of $25,000, according to Assistant Superintendent of Police Stacy Smith, the lead spokesperson for the ongoing investigation.
The entire scheme first came to departmental attention on October 20, 2026, when a staff member attempted to use the long-dormant decommissioned vehicle’s fuel card to refuel a privately owned passenger bus at a local municipal fuel station, triggering an immediate fraud alert in the department’s fleet management tracking system. ASP Smith confirmed that the case is no longer limited to internal police department reviews, as investigators have expanded their probe to identify any potential external accomplices who may have received or resold the illegally obtained fuel.
“Our end-to-end fuel tracking infrastructure logs a clear, timestamped electronic footprint for every single transaction, from the moment the card is scanned at the pump to the exact volume of fuel dispensed and the location of the station,” Smith explained, noting that the full digital paper trail will allow forensic teams to map every instance of unauthorized card use, cross-reference the transactions with GPS data from fuel station security cameras, and build a fully verified timeline of the alleged theft ring.