
There’s never a dull moment in Florida – especially considering the latest alleged robbery of nearly a million dollars worth of jewelry. However, police say their suspect tried to hide the bling in an odd place.
Orlando police say 32-year-old Jaythan Lawrence Gilder waltzed into a Tiffany & Co. store in Orlando, impersonating a representative of an Orlando Magic basketball player. Police said his motive was to gain access to the exclusive, pricey jewelry.
However, the cops accused Gilder of using that opportunity to walk out the store with merchandise without laying down a dime. Police claim he left the store with three pairs of earrings totaling $769,500 and a ring worth $587,000.
Gilder was stopped by police in a traffic stop on Interstate 10 in Washington County. He was arrested on a charge of resisting as well as a whopping 48 outstanding warrants out of Colorado, per News Channel 8. You might be wondering why the cops didn’t bring up the missing merch.
That’s because they didn’t find it until they conducted a body scan of Gilder at the jail. The earrings showed up floating around his abdomen area on the X-ray. No, they weren’t sewn intricately into the fabric of his clothing. Police say the earrings were inside his stomach, suggesting he must have swallowed them after leaving the store.
“These foreign objects are suspected to be the Tiffany & Co earrings taken in the robbery but will need to be collected by WCSO after they are passed through Gilder’s system prior to confirming,” police wrote in the arrest report, per WFLA.
The report also said Gilder randomly asked the jail staff if he could be charged for “what’s in his stomach” and mumbled that he “should have thrown them out the window.”
Gilder was charged with first-degree grand theft as well as robbery with a mask.