Kenduskeag man pleads guilty, gets sentenced for role in theft, sale of heating oil

BANGOR – A Kenduskeag man who found buyers for heating oil stolen from a Milford fuel company pleaded guilty Friday in Penobscot County Superior Court to receiving stolen property and was sentenced to three years with all but nine months suspended, plus probation.

Michael Gonsalves, 41, also was ordered to pay $3,000 in restitution in connection with the fuel theft. He also will serve a concurrent nine months for violating his probation for a previous drug possession crime; that probation was revoked by 3rd District Court Judge Ann Murray.

The judge also removed Gonsalves from the Drug Court, a program aimed at giving people addicted to drugs a second chance.

Still, the suspended sentence with probation balances the need to punish Gonsalves with the possibility he still could rehabilitate himself once he was released from jail, according to Michael Roberts, Penobscot County deputy district attorney.

“We’re trying to punish him for the theft of the oil … while at the same time allowing him to continue his rehabilitation,” Roberts said later Friday.

Another man has been identified as the alleged principal in the thefts.

Benjamin Tibbetts III, 29, an employee of Malenfant’s Fuel and Bottled Gas Co., reportedly had been stealing thousands of gallons of fuel, according to investigators. With help from Gonsalves who lined up prospective customers, Tibbetts allegedly sold the fuel on the side at a reduced rate of $1 per gallon, nearly half the average price of fuel during the five months the thefts occurred.

Authorities arrested Tibbetts on a probation violation, and he likely faces other charges. Roberts said investigators also are looking into those who bought the fuel, as many as 25 people, and whether they knew or should have known that the fuel was stolen.

Gonsalves was fired from the fuel company earlier this year, and investigators from the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department linked him to a stolen fuel truck that was found on Feb. 23, empty and abandoned on a road in Carmel.