Imagine you’re a Florida Highway Patrol officer and you get the call to be on high alert. A Tiffany & Co. in Orlando has just been hit in a high-dollar diamond heist, and the suspect is heading your way. You pull over the car matching the description, ready for a routine takedown. You approach the driver’s side window, expecting some slick, Oceans 11-style professional. Instead, you find Jaythan Lawrence Gilder, 32, looking guilty as hell—and chewing.

“Sir, do you know anything about a jewelry store robbery?” the officer asks. Gilder swallows hard.

Yeah. This guy didn’t just steal nearly $770,000 worth of diamonds. He ate them.

Bad diamond heist plan gets even worse

Gilder’s plan actually started off strong. He walked into Tiffany & Co. posing as a rep for an Orlando Magic player, a decent way to case the place before pulling off a diamond heist. Then he got stupid. Instead of a smooth con, he just grabbed four diamond earrings—one set worth $160,000, the other $609,500—plus a $587,000 ring, and ran. Hopping into his own car and hitting the highway like he wasn’t going to get caught was another genius-level move. But panic must have really set in when he realized how quickly police were closing in, because his final decision? Swallowing the diamonds.

That might not have even been his worst mistake. If Gilder had kept his mouth shut—literally and figuratively—he might have walked free. If no one at the store could positively ID him and police had no physical evidence from the diamond heist, they’d only be able to hold him for 48 hours before they’d have to let him go. If he could hold off on a bathroom break for two days, he might have been able to…deposit his loot elsewhere.

But that’s not how Gilder played it.

Too dumb to be free

Gilder is no criminal mastermind. His first big mistake was throwing away the stolen ring—because now, police had some physical evidence to hold him. His second mistake was introducing himself to store employees before robbing them and running, leaving a nice, clear trail that tied him directly to the diamond heist. His third mistake was a classic: talking too much.

First, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut around other inmates, and police overheard him muttering, “I should have thrown them out the window.” Then he made the real blunder: he asked police if he could be “charged for what’s in my stomach.”

This is the part where any criminal with half a brain would have lawyered up. But Gilder, being Gilder, decided to ask the police for legal advice. He handed them probable cause on a silver platter. They ran a body scan and, sure enough, the stolen earrings showed up in his stomach. His diamond heist had officially gone from bad to worse.

And that’s how Gilder turned what might have been a clean getaway into charges of first-degree grand theft. A smart thief would have known better. Gilder did not. Now he gets to spend the next few days waiting for his big score to make its way back to the evidence locker.