Houston Man Found Guilty in Mall at Millenia Tiffany Heist After Swallowing $770,000 in Earrings

An Orange County jury on Thursday, Oct. 22, found a Houston man guilty of robbery and grand theft in the February 2025 heist at the Tiffany & Co. store in Orlando's Mall at Millenia. Police said he swallowed two pairs of diamond earrings worth about $770,000 while he was being arrested in the Florida Panhandle.

Jaythan Lawrence Gilder, 34, was convicted following a trial in Orange County, the Office of the State Attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit announced. He remains in custody at the Orange County Jail. The Orlando Sentinel reported that sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 7, while WKMG News 6 said only that sentencing would come at a later date.

State Attorney Monique Worrell said in a statement that the case involved more than a significant financial loss. "This verdict sends a clear message that violence and theft will not be tolerated in our community," she said.

The heist at the Mall at Millenia

According to Orlando police and an arrest warrant filed in 2025, Gilder walked into the Tiffany store at the upscale mall on Conroy Road on Feb. 26, 2025, without an appointment. He told employees he represented an Orlando Magic player who was interested in buying nearly $1 million in jewelry, FOX 13 reported at the time. CBS News reported he used the name "Shawn" and did not identify the player.

Staff took him to a VIP room and showed him several high-end pieces, according to the warrant. They included a pair of 4.86-carat diamond solitaire earrings priced at $160,000, a pair of 8.19-carat solitaire earrings priced at $609,500 and a 5.61-carat diamond ring.

Police said Gilder grabbed the jewelry and forced his way out of the room through a sliding glass door. An employee was injured when he grabbed and pushed her arm, and the ring was dropped during the scuffle, according to police accounts. He fled with the two pairs of earrings, valued together at $769,500, to a waiting car. Prosecutors said he also tried to steal the ring, which along with the earrings brought the total value of the pieces involved to about $1.3 million, the Sentinel reported.

A traffic stop on Interstate 10

Detectives used mall surveillance video and public safety cameras to track the getaway vehicle. Police said Gilder had switched license plates, and investigators alerted the Florida Highway Patrol. Troopers stopped the car on Interstate 10 in Washington County, in the Panhandle, that evening, apparently as he headed west toward Texas, police said.

During the stop, troopers saw him trying to swallow items, according to the arrest report. One trooper heard him say, "I should have thrown them out the window." At the Washington County Jail, a body scan showed foreign objects in his stomach. He asked jail staff, "Am I going to be charged with what is in my stomach?" according to the report cited by News 6.

Investigators found Tiffany earring forms, price tags and an earring backing stamped with the Tiffany logo in the car. Troopers initially arrested him on a resisting charge, separate from the robbery, according to CBS News. Gilder was later extradited to Orange County to face the theft charges.

Waiting for the evidence

What followed made the case a national curiosity. Detectives waited at a hospital for the jewelry to pass through his system, an effort that took about 12 days. Police said three of the four earrings were recovered on March 10, 2025, and the fourth on March 12. Orlando police later released photos of the recovered diamonds.

The earrings were returned to Tiffany for cleaning and verification, and the company's master jeweler confirmed the inscriptions and serial numbers matched the stolen pieces, police said. The employee who was injured also identified Gilder in a jail lineup, according to CBS News.

Orlando police Det. Aaron Goss summed up the investigation at the time by saying, "This case quickly turned into a marathon, not a sprint."

Charges and the road to trial

Gilder was originally charged with robbery with a mask and first-degree grand theft involving property worth $100,000 or more. Police said at the time that although he did not wear a full mask, he wore a gauze nose covering, an arm bandage and a hat, which they said met the state's definition. The State Attorney's Office announcement and news reports on the verdict describe the convictions as robbery and grand theft and did not specify whether the mask enhancement was part of the jury's finding.

Earlier this year, Gilder turned down a plea offer from prosecutors and won a judge's permission to represent himself, according to reports in May, with a public defender kept available as standby counsel. It was not immediately clear whether he represented himself through the end of the trial.

A long record of jewelry thefts

Gilder's history drew attention when he was arrested. FOX 13 reported in 2025 that his arrest record went back at least 13 years, much of it involving expensive jewelry. Records cited by the station included a 2014 pawn shop theft in which his blood was found at the scene after a display case was broken with a pickaxe, and a 2022 theft from a Tiffany store in the Houston area, which the Sentinel placed in The Woodlands, that was linked to him through DNA from a beard hair. He was sentenced in Texas in 2023 to two years in jail, according to the report.

Orlando police also said in 2025 that he faced 48 failure-to-appear warrants out of Colorado. The status of those cases was not clear.

What's next

Gilder will remain in the Orange County Jail until sentencing, which the Orlando Sentinel reported is set for Dec. 7 before an Orange County circuit judge. Grand theft of property worth $100,000 or more is a first-degree felony under Florida law. The State Attorney's Office has not said what punishment it will request.

For the Mall at Millenia, home to many of Orlando's luxury retailers, the case became an unusual footnote. Tiffany got its earrings back, and a jury has now decided who took them.