Editors Note: This article was originally published in the March 27, 2024 issue of the Chronicle Progress. Some information may be outdated.
A wanted 46-year-old man driving a Maserati and looking to retrieve his wife’s Porsche from a county impound lot was arrested by Millard County Sheriff’s detectives last Wednesday in Fillmore.
Jason Brauner was pulled over in his luxury vehicle after pulling into the parking lot of Costa Vida. Detectives were on the lookout for the suspect and were aware he was wanted on felony burglary and unauthorized possession charges out of Salt Lake County.
His wife had been arrested in Fillmore the previous week, on March 13, after she was discovered at a local gas station with an unresponsive 18-month-old boy.
Now her husband is facing more than two dozen new criminal charges after local detectives discovered a litany of items, including suspected drugs, burglary tools, nine fake medical IDs, and an assortment of hospital scrubs inside the man’s Maserati.
He was charged with nine counts of third-degree felony possession of forgery devices, two Class A misdemeanor drug possession counts, a Class B misdemeanor drug paraphernalia count, 12 counts of Class B misdemeanor possession of burglary tools and one Class C misdemeanor count of improper vehicle registration.
According to court records, Brauner has multiple ongoing criminal cases in Salt Lake and Wasatch counties involving theft, burglary, forgery and other charges.
He was featured last summer in a KSL.com news report after he was accused of stealing items from Heber Valley Hospital, where he worked as an environmental services manager, according to the news outlet. Multiple coworkers came forward and accused the man of stealing credit cards from their lockers, which were in a room only staff could access.
Brauner also was allegedly caught stealing medical equipment valued at $26,000 from the Ear Nose and Throat Center of Utah located at the hospital around the same time period, according to the KSL report.
He was caught on video surveillance allegedly burglarizing the ENT center as well as separately using a stolen credit card at a commercial establishment.
Brauner was also caught on tape a third time—the allegations behind the warrant issued out of Salt Lake County that local detectives learned of—seen stealing a laptop and six PICO laser tips from a facility at the University of Utah, where Brauner previously worked and had an employee badge, according to a criminal information on file in Third District Court.
The information was filed pursuant to a search warrant after authorities traced the stolen university laptop to Brauner’s home.
Previous to the multiple cases opened in 2023, Brauner was accused of felony aggravated child abuse in 2022. He pleaded guilty to that charge in July 2023 and his plea was held in abeyance.
His wife, Chelsea Brauner, 31, is also being held in the Millard County Jail on multiple charges, including felony child endangerment and four Class A misdemeanors of reckless endangerment and drug possession.
She allegedly attempted to give her child to strangers in Millard County twice before someone called police to report the child was unresponsive. She later allegedly admitted to a sheriff’s deputy that her child was exposed to heroin and fentanyl.
Both husband and wife are being held without bail.
