Jaythan Gilder walked into the Tiffany & Co. at Orlando’s Mall at Millenia in February 2025 and did what any upstanding citizen might do when faced with a case full of diamond earrings worth more than $760,000: he told staff he was negotiating a purchase on behalf of a professional basketball player. This is, apparently, a sentence that works on jewelry store employees, because they let him handle the merchandise — at which point he grabbed it, shoved an employee out of the way, and ran.
Police eventually caught up with him. Gilder’s response to being arrested with three-quarters of a million dollars in stolen diamonds on his person was to swallow the evidence. Not metaphorically. Authorities then had to monitor him for nearly two weeks — reportedly the longest and least glamorous stakeout in Orlando mall history — before the jewelry was, let’s say, returned to circulation.
A jury has now found Gilder guilty of robbery and grand theft. Sentencing is pending, as is, one assumes, a very thorough conversation with his digestive tract’s legal team.
The unnamed NBA player he claimed to represent remains unindicted and presumably unaware he almost owned the world’s most expensive fiber supplement.
All of this actually happened. News4Jax confirmed it, conviction and all.