{"id":74896,"date":"2025-12-07T23:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T23:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/74896\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T23:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T23:00:20","slug":"sweetwater-police-arrest-man-seize-more-than-100-suspected-counterfeit-items-in-dolphin-mall-parking-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/74896\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweetwater police arrest man, seize more than 100 suspected counterfeit items in Dolphin Mall parking lot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0December 5, 2025 at 6:43 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Updated:\u00a0December 5, 2025 at 10:04 PM<\/p>\n<p>Sweetwater police arrest man, seize more than 100 suspected counterfeit items <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">SWEETWATER, Fla. \u2014 A man was arrested Friday afternoon after Sweetwater police officers said they witnessed a suspected counterfeit goods transaction in Dolphin Mall\u2019s parking lot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Police said the incident began shortly after 2 p.m., when plainclothes officers noticed three men who appeared to be loitering in the parking lot. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">When the officers passed through the area again, they reported seeing a transaction between a seller and two customers.<\/p>\n<p>Sweetwater police arrest man, seize more than 100 suspected counterfeit items in Dolphin Mall <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Officers approached and arrested Luis Enrique Merchan-Meron. According to police, more than 100 items were recovered from Merchan-Meron\u2019s pickup truck.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cYou have to have a permit to sell anywhere in this county and our city \u2014 and this parking lot certainly is not it,\u201d Assistant Police Chief Frank Fernandez said. \u201cAnyone selling in this lot, you\u2019re in violation. Number two, the manner in which he was selling, you could tell it was criminal activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Merchan-Meron, 24, was booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Friday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">He is expected to face at least two felony charges related to counterfeit merchandise, and additional charges may be added as the investigation continues.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Magdala Louissaint\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/https:\/\/author-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/37f8699f-d0f0-420f-8dfa-.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Magdala Louissaint<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Magdala Louissaint joined WPLG in August 2025 and is thrilled to call South Florida home. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0December 5, 2025 at 6:43 PM Updated:\u00a0December 5, 2025 at 10:04 PM Sweetwater police arrest man, seize more&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":{"0":"post-74896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hialeah","8":"tag-hialeah","9":"tag-hialeah-headlines","10":"tag-hialeah-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74896","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=74896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}