The Accused Crypto Kid from Belle Glade #CriptoNews

BELLE GLADE, Fla. (CBS12) — A Belle Glade man is accused in a string of crimes that grabbed the attention of the CBS12 News I-Team over the summer: Now we can report, in detail, about the high octane plot he’s allegedly a part of.

Twenty-three-year-old Reynaldo “Rey” Diaz is currently in federal custody and the story behind his arrest in the state of Connecticut conjures up a techno-thriller meets Fast and the Furious.

Five of Diaz’s friends are also in custody. It’s not clear if he was the ringleader or a foot-soldier, but he hails from the rural cow town in Palm Beach County. And Diaz still apparently has ties to Belle Glade, but he’s made quite a name for himself in Miami and in cyberspace.

He told police his home was a house on Avenue F.

No one answered the door, and so far, no one has reached out to the I-Team since leaving our contact information on the front step.

The Nutmeg State

A police report from Danbury, Connecticut led us to the address.

Back in August, Rey Diaz was arrested for unlaw restraint and conspiracy to commit unlawful restraint.

More charges were added later, but in plain English, cops explained, it was a foiled kidnapping plot. Some of it was even caught on camera.

Federal authorities say Rey Diaz and five pals traveled from Florida to Connecticut.

They’re accused of targeting a married couple in their 50s- who was out for a drive in their Lamborghini.

Diaz and company are accused of crashing into the couple with their rental car.

Stunned, having just been rear-ended, the husband and wife got out of the Lambo, and that’s when a white work van appeared.

From inside, men in dressed in black pounced, forcing the couple into the van; tying them up and putting duct tape over their mouths.

Other drivers saw the incident unfolding and called 9-1-1.

Officers heading to the scene spotted the white van.

There was a short chase, then the van crashed.

The victims were taken to the hospital; the suspects caught and cuffed.

At the time, the feds weren’t saying a lot about the motive behind the attempted kidnapping but a tipster told the I-Team, this was worth a closer look.

The Miami Carjacking(s)

Two years before he became a suspect in the Danbury case, Rey Diaz was the victim of something kind of similar, in Miami’s design district.

He and a friend were parked in a yellow Corvette. A masked gunmen tried to carjack Diaz and the pal and Diaz got shot.

A news crew from CBS Miami was rolling as Diaz was unloaded from the ambulance.

The other man in the Corvette from the incident says on that night, (February 15, 2022) he and Diaz were going to a nightclub; they were sporting expensive watches and jewelry, he thought at the time, that’s why they were held up.

But now police in Miami say Diaz was something of an armed robbery and carjacking guru.

It’s possible he got shot by accident by members of his own crew.

Two suspects from an additional Miami carjacking involving Diaz are also part of the Connecticut case.

And carjacking was fruitful, Miami police say.

Between the cars and things inside them, Diaz and his accomplices were netting hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Diaz lived in a posh condo, rocked the best sneakers and luxury items.

And as of a few weeks ago, cops and the feds have a new theory about how Diaz became rich at 21.

The Heist

Investigators now believe that Rey Diaz used the online name Pantic and was bragging about a crypto currency heist that raked in hundreds of millions of dollars.

Investigators believe a wealthy victim in Washington, D.C., was bamboozled by Rey Diaz and accomplices to reveal sensitive information about his crypto-currency accounts, that enabled the suspects to rob the victim. Then, somehow, the suspects converted the crypto into actual currency; like bearer bonds being transferred to offshore accounts, but digital.

And that attempted kidnapping in Connecticut: The feds say, the couple’s 19-year-old son was perhaps part of that crypto heist too.

Mom and dad in the Lambo were going to be held hostage because their son and his alleged partners in crypto-crime had a falling out.

Facing the case in Connecticut and Florida, Reynaldo “Rey” Diaz might not be returning to Belle Glade for a very long time.

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