The former Estero Fire Rescue battalion chief who ran Southwest Florida's urban search and rescue task force has been sentenced to five years in prison for stealing from it, and prosecutors say he bought the cameras and the tracking device he used on his ex-wife with the task force credit cards

The former Estero Fire Rescue battalion chief who ran Southwest Florida's urban search and rescue task force has been sentenced to five years in prison for stealing from it, the State Attorney's Office for the Twentieth Judicial Circuit announced on August 13.

The office says Albert Shane Sibert was adjudicated guilty of second-degree grand theft, aggravated stalking, violation of the wiretap statute, installing a tracking device without consent, and domestic violence battery. He pled no contest to the charges.

The sentence is five years in prison in total, to be followed by 10 years of probation. He was also ordered to pay $47,103 in restitution to Urban Search and Rescue, and the office says he has paid it in full.

The News-Press, which reported the sentencing, gives his age as 55 and his home city as North Fort Myers, and dates his arrest to September 26, 2025. The office's release spells the surname Siebert; the arrest announcement and the outlet both spell it Sibert, which is the spelling used here.

What the credit cards bought

The office says Sibert was a battalion chief at Estero Fire and Rescue and the program manager for Southwest Florida Urban Search and Rescue, and that he used credit cards in that role to make personal purchases.

That much is an embezzlement case. What the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found when it investigated is why the charge sheet runs past grand theft.

The office says FDLE found he had used the credit cards to buy items such as tracking devices and cameras, and that he then used those items to stalk his ex-wife. FDLE also found non-consensual audio and video recordings of her, and during the same investigation found an incident of domestic violence.

The public money and the stalking are therefore not two separate stories that happened to involve the same man. On the account the prosecuting office gives, the equipment was bought with the task force cards.

What it means for the money

The restitution is the unusual part, and it is worth stating plainly because it is the question a Lee County taxpayer asks first.

The full $47,103 has been repaid. The task force is not out the money, and there is no shortfall left for the public to absorb.

What remains is the control question rather than the loss. A single program manager ran personal spending through public emergency-response credit cards over a period of years, and the matter reached the Florida Department of Law Enforcement rather than being caught and stopped inside the agency.

Urban search and rescue is not an ordinary line item in Southwest Florida. It is the capability that deploys after a hurricane to pull people out of collapsed and flooded structures, and its purchasing runs on cards that have to move fast in an emergency by design. That is precisely the kind of spending that is hardest to review after the fact and easiest to misuse.

A note on the plea

A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt. It is a statement that the defendant does not contest the charges, and it leaves the facts unadmitted.

What followed it here is a conviction all the same. The office says he was adjudicated guilty, which is the court's finding, and the sentence and the restitution order follow from that adjudication rather than from the plea itself.

Economic Crime Unit Chief J.D. Miller and Assistant State Attorney Michael Curley prosecuted the case for the Twentieth Judicial Circuit, which covers Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties.