Forbes W. March (YouTube screenshot)
A 49-year-old former soap actor and another man have been arrested for allegedly stealing a large amount of used cooking oil from a diner in upstate New York — a crime that has spiked in recent years, as the used oil can be processed and manufactured into biofuel.
Forbes W. March, who previously had reoccurring roles on “All My Children,” “One Life to Live,” and “As the World Turns,” was taken into custody earlier this month with his alleged accomplice, 30-year-old Oscar Guardado, and charged with felony fourth-degree grand larceny, authorities said.
According to a press release from the Ulster Police Department, officers responded to a call at 9:52 p.m. on March 2 about an alleged theft at Michael’s Diner in Ulster, about 50 miles south of Albany.
The caller reported seeing two subjects “siphoning used cooking oil from the storage container in the rear of Michael’s Diner,” police said.
“The cooking oil was in a storage container owned by Buffalo Biodiesel,” police said, adding that the stolen cooking oil’s value was over $1,000.
Last year, Sumit Majumdar, the president of Buffalo Biodiesel, explained the rise in used cooking oil thefts and its effect on the industry in an interview with Los Angeles CW affiliate KTLA.
The company works with thousands of restaurants, setting up waste containers to dispose of used cooking grease. Buffalo Biodiesel then sends drivers to collect the grease and bring it to factories where it is manufactured into biodiesel fuel.
“It’s ballooning. It’s wiping out a third of our business,” Majumdar told the station in November 2022. “To put that into numbers, it is $10 million to $15 million a year.”
Majumdar said that thieves will aggregate the used oil stolen from several locations and then fence the product, selling it through a broker so that it becomes “kind of washed.”
“And it’ll go off to a refinery, and [the thieves] are making a lot of money,” he said.
March, who also appeared in works such as “Mutant X” from 2001 until 2004 and “Degrassi Takes Manhattan” in 2010, and Guardado were both released after being charged and ordered to appear in the Town of Ulster Court at a later date.
The former actor retired from show business and currently operates The New York Firewood Company, which delivers firewood to businesses and private homes in the Catskills.
It is unclear whether Forbes has hired an attorney to represent him in the grand larceny case.
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