A former Orange County sheriff’s deputy has been sentenced to probation and community service for illegally taking a woman’s valid driver license during a traffic stop in 2025.
A Seminole County jury found JACOB D. HOBBY, 29, guilty of petit theft at a June 24 trial based on evidence and witness testimony presented by prosecutors Debbie Lee and David Whateley.
Seminole County sheriff’s investigators say then-deputy Hobby stopped the woman for, as he claimed, speeding on Alafaya Trail in Oviedo, just inside Seminole County, at about 1:50 a.m. on Jan. 12, 2025. But Hobby didn’t return to his car to run a check on her; never called in the stop or activated his body camera; and didn’t issue the driver a citation.
Instead, Hobby confiscated her license and a THC vape pen and sent the driver back onto the road. Later, he told investigators he was doing the woman “a solid” by not giving her a traffic citation.
“He took the law into his own hands, he didn’t follow the rules, he was going to impose his own form of justice,” Whateley said. “He let her drive away without her license, which is an offense by itself.”
The woman later checked online that her license was valid and called the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, which found no record of the traffic stop. Investigators used video from traffic cameras to confirm that it happened and identified the patrol vehicle as one from Orange County that was assigned to Hobby. A search of his vehicle found the woman’s driver license tucked into a space above the interior ceiling dome light. Hobby had disposed of the vape pen in a property package from a different traffic stop, investigators found.
Following Hobby’s conviction on the second-degree misdemeanor, Judge Debra Krause sentenced him to six months’ probation, 120 hours of community service, and fines and fees totaling $1,292.
Hobby resigned from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in 2025 amid an internal affairs investigation. He rejected a plea offer from the State Attorney’s Office that would have required surrendering his law enforcement certification in exchange for him entering a diversion program. Instead, he got his own day in county court.