{"id":115367,"date":"2026-01-12T19:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T19:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/115367\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T19:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T19:07:08","slug":"suspected-fragrance-thief-arrested-after-string-of-robberies-in-tampa-bay-area-sppd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/115367\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspected fragrance thief arrested after string of robberies in Tampa Bay area: SPPD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/tag\/us\/fl\/pinellas\/st-petersburg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">St. Petersburg<\/a> police have arrested a man that they say was involved in several robberies across the Bay Area in the past month.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Joseph Brown, 27, was taken into custody on January 6 after police tracked down a gray Mazda that they say was involved in a robbery at a nearby CVS in St. Pete.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Police say that Brown and other co-conspirators went into multiple businesses late at night with face coverings and disguises to target fragrance storage areas or locked fragrance displays to steal high-value items.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">During one of the robberies, surveillance video shows one of the suspects pepper spraying a CVS employee.<\/p>\n<p>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/glkbko08j7a6ftl0.jpg\" alt=\"Video: Two masked robbers pepper spray CVS clerks\" class=\"sr-only\" data-v-4292be72=\"\"\/>   <\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">The Mazda that Brown was driving was later determined to be a Turo rental vehicle, and they were able to track it down using the owner&#8217;s GPS system.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">PREVIOUS: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/news\/two-masked-suspects-pepper-spay-cvs-store-clerks-during-st-pete-robbery-search-underway-police\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">CVS store clerks pepper sprayed during St. Pete robbery, search underway for 2 suspects: Police<\/a><\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"WTVT\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Timeline:<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">In total, investigators say that Brown was involved in separate robberies across the Tampa Bay area between December 14 and January 5. The stolen goods from the robberies at several CVS locations, a Walgreens and a JCPenney are worth $11,758.97 before taxes.<\/p>\n<p> December 14 at the CVS at 105 S Pebble Beach Boulevard, Sun City Center.December 15, 2025, at the CVS at 403 N Alexander Street, Plant City.December 20 at the Walgreens at 17511 N Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, Tampa.January 5 at the CVS at 301 3rd Street, St. Petersburg.January 5 at JCPenney at 201 Westshore Plaza, Tampa. Charges for Brown Burglary of an occupied structure while wearing a mask (4 counts)Retail theft \u2013 $3,000 or moreMultiple retail thefts within a specified time period (20 or more items)Retail theft from multiple locations ($750 or more) <\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Brown is being held at the Hillsborough County jail on $170,000 bond.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Police are looking for the other suspects in this case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"group-source-paragraph\" data-v-4fbf7207=\"\">The Source: Information for this story was provided by the St. Pete Police Department.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/tag\/us\/fl\/pinellas\/st-petersburg\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">St. Petersburg<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/tag\/crime-publicsafety\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. &#8211; St. Petersburg police have arrested a man that they say was involved in several&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[630,47,115,1157,202,204,203,199,201,200,628],"class_list":{"0":"post-115367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-crime-publicsafety","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pinellas","12":"tag-st-pete","13":"tag-st-pete-headlines","14":"tag-st-pete-news","15":"tag-st-petersburg","16":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","17":"tag-st-petersburg-news","18":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}