Forbes March, a former soap actor who did stints on One Life to Live, All My Children and As the World Turns, was arrested in Hudson County, New York, earlier this month and charged with grand larceny for the alleged theft of used cooking oil from a diner.
The cooking oil has an estimated value of more than $1,000, according to the Ulster Police Department, and was allegedly siphoned by March and a second man, Oscar Guardado, from a storage container owned by a company called Buffalo Biodiesel. The tank was located behind Michael’s Diner, an Ulster restaurant.
The two men, who were released following their arrests, are expected to answer the charges of grand larceny in the fourth degree in the Town of Ulster Court at a later date.
Used cooking oil can be used to manufacture biofuels, and theft has been on the rise throughout the Northeast region in recent years as fuel prices increase. In an interview last year, Sumit Majumdar, the president of Buffalo Biodiesel, said the thefts have cost his company millions of dollars. “It’s ballooning,” he said. “It’s wiping out a third of our business. To put that into numbers: $10 million to $15 million a year.”
Buffalo Biodiesel collects used cooking grease from thousands of restaurants across 12 states for processing into biofuels.
According to the Ulster Police Department, March and Guardado were arrested on March 2 after police were called to Michael’s Diner on a report of two subjects siphoning used cooking oil from a container on the diner property.
Forbes owns and operates a firewood delivery company based out of his farm in the Catskill Mountains. The New York Firewood Company supplies wood for restaurants and private residences.
Prior to his retirement from acting, Forbes was a popular and busy actor of daytime soaps, starting with his role as Scott Chandler on ABC’s All My Children in 1999. He played Nash Brennan on ABC’s One Life to Live from 2005 to 2008, and, in 2009, Mason Jarvis on CBS’ As the World Turns.
Other TV credits include the Canadian science fiction series Mutant X, Degrassi: The Next Generation and the 2010 TV movie Degrassi Takes Manhattan.