HARTFORD, Conn.– A Florida man pleaded guilty Thursday in connection with the carjacking and kidnapping of a Connecticut couple, in what authorities called a failed ransom plot that may have been linked to a $240 million cryptocurrency heist.
Michael Rivas, 19, of Miami, was one of six men arrested on August 25 after a series of events in Danbury. He pleaded guilty to kidnapping and conspiracy charges in federal court in Hartford. Two others are expected to file similar pleas in the same court on Friday.
The couple was driving a new Lamborghini SUV when the suspects forced them out of the SUV, assaulted them, put them in a van and tied them up, police said. Witnesses immediately alerted the police. Four of the men were arrested after abandoning their vehicles, including the van, and fleeing on foot, while the other two were later taken into custody at a nearby home that the group had rented through Airbnb, authorities said. The couple was injured but survived the ordeal.
Rivas, wearing a tan prison uniform with his legs shackled during the hearing, apologized for his actions. He said it was a “stupid” decision to help one of his co-defendants carry out what he called a “vendetta.” He didn’t work it out.
His attorney, Brian Woolf, said Rivas accepted a co-defendant’s invitation to join the plot in hopes of getting a share of the ransom, and he regrets that decision.
The plot arose because the suspects “believed that the victims’ son had access to significant amounts of digital currency,” and they intended to demand a ransom from the son, payable in digital currency,” according to a federal indictment.
Just a week earlier, at least two thieves had stolen $240 million Bitcoin in an elaborate Internet and telephone scam, then indulged in spending money on cars, mansions, trips, jewelry and nights out at clubs, authorities said.
Publicly, federal prosecutors and agents have not definitively linked the kidnapping to the Bitcoin theft. Officials have declined to comment on possible links between the two cases, including how the six suspects knew the couple’s son had a large amount of digital currency.
But federal agents told Danbury police that the FBI was investigating whether the couple’s son was involved in the Bitcoin theft, according to Danbury Detective Sgt. Steven Castrovinci told The Associated Press. Neither Danbury police nor federal authorities have named the couple or their son.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ross Weingarten declined to comment after Thursday’s hearing.
In mid-September, federal prosecutors announced that the two men, Malone Lam, 20, and Jeandiel Serrano, 21, had been indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments in connection with the cryptocurrency theft.
Court documents show that unnamed co-conspirators were involved in the scam involving the two men. Their lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
Prosecutors said in court documents that Lam, Serrano and unnamed co-conspirators posed as technical support staff for Google and a cryptocurrency exchange while contacting the theft victim with an offer to help him with an alleged security breach.
The victim, from Washington, DC, believed them and gave them remote access to his computer on August 18. That resulted in the alleged thieves making off with more than 4,100 Bitcoin, which was then valued at more than $240 million, prosecutors said. That amount of Bitcoin is now worth almost $380 million.
According to prosecutors, Serrano, of Los Angeles, admitted during an interview with federal investigators that he used the stolen money to buy three cars, worth a total of more than $1 million, as well as a $500,000 watch. He also said he had about $20 million in the victim’s currency and agreed to turn the money over to the FBI, authorities said.
Meanwhile, Lam, a Singapore resident with addresses in Los Angeles and Miami, Florida, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a night at Los Angeles nightclubs buying custom Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches, prosecutors said. He also rented two mansions in Miami, bought a $2 million watch and had a Lamborghini Revuelto worth more than $1 million.
Federal prosecutors said in court documents that at least $100 million of the stolen money is still missing.
Exactly a week after the crypto theft, the couple from Danbury, a city of more than 80,000 along the New York border, were forced out of their SUV in their hometown after one of the carjackers’ vehicles rear-ended them and two other vehicles . surrounded them. The group attacked the man with a baseball bat and dragged the woman by her hair as they put them in the van, where the couple was bound with duct tape, police said.
“I am deeply remorseful for my irresponsible conduct,” Rivas told U.S. District Judge Sarala Nagala on Thursday. “I should have known better.”
“This is not what my parents taught me growing up,” he added.
Rivas and the other five men are also charged with kidnapping and assault in Connecticut state court. The other men are also from Florida.
The sentence was set for May 13. The prosecution and defense agreed on sentencing guidelines, which call for approximately 11 to 14 years in prison.