Monroe County, Florida sheriff's deputy misused police databases and license-plate cameras to track and pull over woman he met on TV set

On February 19, 2026, Monroe County Sheriff's Office Deputy Lamar Eliseo Roman pulled over a 27-year-old woman on U.S. 1 in the Florida Keys after a license-plate-reader hotlist he had placed on her car alerted him to her location, the culmination of more than two weeks in which he repeatedly misused sheriff's-office and state databases to collect her personal information. Roman met the woman on February 3, 2026 while working a paid security detail on the set of the Apple TV+ series "Bad Monkey," filming on Big Pine Key; after she told him she had a boyfriend, he told her he would find her and pull her over. He then ran her name through the agency's identification systems, used her driver's license number to look up her vehicle in a state database, and entered her license plate into an automated license-plate-reader hotlist that would alert him whenever her car passed a camera.

Investigators say Roman searched for the woman's information, sometimes multiple times a day, from the day he met her through February 19, when the hotlist alerted him to her car on U.S. 1. His in-car camera showed him speeding up to 70 mph and passing several vehicles, including two dump trucks, in a no-passing zone, then driving into oncoming traffic and forcing another driver to swerve off the road to avoid a head-on collision; he never logged the pursuit, as department policy requires. He then pulled the woman over near Big Coppitt Key and told her, "I told you I'd find you and pull you over," adding that he had hoped her boyfriend was in the car "so I can pull him out and give him a hard time."

In a recorded interview during the department's internal investigation, Roman admitted he had no legitimate law-enforcement reason to search the databases and told investigators, "I saw a shiny thing." Investigators substantiated the misuse through his own admissions and agency database logs showing repeated searches for the woman's information; the woman separately told investigators she did not want to pursue criminal charges against him.

Updates

2026-03-10 — Roman fired, arrested on felony database-misuse charge [1, 2]

The Monroe County Sheriff's Office fired Roman and arrested him on a third-degree felony charge of misusing law-enforcement computers, networks, and electronic devices. He was booked into the agency's Key West jail facility and was no longer listed as an inmate the next day.

2026-07-01 — Roman entered pretrial diversion deal avoiding jail time [3]

Roman signed a two-year pretrial intervention agreement that will result in dismissal of the charges if he completes it. He avoided jail, must have no contact with the woman, pay about $1,700 in investigative and prosecutorial costs, perform 100 hours of community service, and continue psychotherapy.