Man Allegedly Claims To Represent Orlando Magic Player, Steals Jewelry, Swallows It During Arrest

Everyone loves a good dumb criminal story. However, I feel like most of the time I can at least see what the perpetrator or alleged perpetrator was going for.

What follows is not one of those times…

According to Fox 35 Orlando, the Orlando Police Department says 32-year-old Jaythan Lawrence Gilder was seen stealing a pair of cameras from the Tiffany and Co. store inside The Mall at Millenia. This is the hoity-toity mall in Orlando, which could explain why Gilder allegedly told staff there he was a representative for a member of the Orlando Magic and looking to buy some jewelry.

He was taken to a VIP room where the staff showed him a few pieces of jewelry that were all worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

Gilder is then alleged to have tried to grab some of these pieces off the counter and sneak out of the room, but he reportedly had trouble with a sliding glass door.

Which I can understand. We've all been grilling and realized we forgot something then tried to run back inside quickly and crashed into a sliding glass door. Employees then tried to get the jewelry back at which point GIlder is alleged to have pushed one staffer who unfortunately, was injured.

GIlder then fled to his car, but because this mall has so many high-end store there are cameras everywhere, and police nailed down Gilder's car, and he was spotted hours up the road in Washington Country, which is in the Florida panhandle.

Authorities say Gilder swallowed a couple of objects during his arrest, so they took him to get some X-rays and those revealed some kind of foreign object in his stomach that sure looked like an earring.

So now, authorities are just playing the waiting game… if you know what I mean.

Interestingly, Gilder has had previous run-ins with the law, including an incident in 2022 when was caught stealing from — would you believe? — a Tiffany & Co. store in the Houston area.