An Ocklawaha man who was shown Monday burglarizing a residence on the Marion County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page already is behind bars.
Matthew William Semione, 30, was arrested Tuesday afternoon at his residence, located at 6496 SE 180th Avenue Rd. in Ocklawaha, and charged with two counts of burglary, two counts of larceny/grand theft, fraud and larceny/grand theft of a firearm. He’s being held on $43,000 bond and is due to appear in Marion County Court on May 7 at 9 a.m.
In the Facebook video, a man sheriff’s deputies have identified as Semione was shown in extremely clear surveillance video burglarizing a residence on March 28 in the 15000 block of SE 100th Street in Ocklawaha. The man deputies claim was Semione was wearing jeans, a black Salt Life shirt, a backwards baseball cap and blue gloves. He was slender with a beard and visible tattoo on his left arm that deputies say matched one shown in a previous Semione booking photograph.
Semione is accused of taking a set of Bose headphones valued at $350 from the residence. In the video, the burglary appeared to be attempting to take a television set but left it behind, as well as a purple lunchbox/mini-cooler he had appeared to be concealing items in, a sheriff’s office report states.
Semione also was arrested in connection with a second burglary that took place March 18 at a residence in the 17400 block of SE 65th Street. The victims reported returning home and finding a sliding glass door to a guest room open. The victim said he believed the burglar entered through a back window and left through the guest-room sliding door, a report says.
The victims of the second burglary reported several items missing, including at black Taurus G2 semiautomatic 9 mm handgun valued at $500, a pink nylon envelope containing $1,200, a jar containing $30 in loose change, credit cards and black sun glasses valued at $30.
Ten days later, the victims contacted a deputy to report that a checkbook also was missing and when they made contact with their bank in Wisconsin, they were told that someone was attempting to cash checks in their name using a phone number that belonged to Semione. The victims provided copies of the checks to deputies and said no funds were missing out of their account, the report says, adding that they also discovered a 14-karat, white-gold bracelet with round, brilliant-cut diamonds valued at $3,295 missing.
On Tuesday, Semione admitted to taking the blank checks from the second residence and trying to cash them using the money app Venmo. He said he also attempted to cash two of the checks but couldn’t remember where, and he used his girlfriend’s name on one of them to see if it would go through, the report says.
Semione, who lived near the residence in the second burglary, had recently moved to the neighborhood from Keystone Heights. He told a deputy that he was on active felony probation, had an active warrant out for his arrest and was living in Marion County without telling his probation officer, the report says.