For intimidating a 12 year old girl into sending him nude photos and then circulating the images among her classmates, a Employee of the Veterans Affairs government in Florida was arrested last Friday.
Thomas Zayas, a father of 31 years, is accused of pretending to be an online persona called “Romeo”, on WhatsApp, and of trying to set up a high school girl for a predatory sexual relationship last summer.
When the girl refused his requests, he allegedly created another account, Romeo’s fake sister “Millie”, an aggressive MMA fighter, to intimidate the minor into sending nude photos of herself. Weeks later, those images reached other students along with bullying allegations that the teen had sexually transmitted diseases.
When the school principal and police became involved, an investigation that included the FBI, VA investigators, and the local Orlando sheriff’s office ultimately pointed the finger at Zayas.
The phone number in the WhatsApp text message conversation belonged to Zayas, and the flowers he bought her were ordered online with his government computer, the FBI said in an affidavit . When the Orange County Sheriff’s Office raided his apartment last month, investigators say they found a phone Zayas used to manage the separated people.
Although the man initially denied all during a recorded interview, investigators say he changed his tone when they stopped recording. Zayas would have admitted that it all started as a “joke”, but when the minor “interrupted ‘Romeo’, he felt that he needed to teach him a lesson.”
An FBI affidavit states that Zayas said: ‘I’m a pathetic loser’ and stated that he had not had a date in six years since his wife left him.
Glamarys Beltrán, the separated mother of her two children, reported that her ex-partner had been arrested on Friday.
“He was very manipulative and mentally and emotionally abusive,” the woman told The Dauly Beast during an interview in Spanish.
The woman, who never married Zayas, but separated from him and fought for custody of their children, stated that her own relationship with him began under suspicious circumstances when she was 18 years old and lived at home with his parents. They met online and she remembered him saying that he was 23 years old, but then found out that he was actually 23
“I felt dirty. I felt upset. I asked myself: ‘Why?’ But a month later, I found out that she was already pregnant. I never said anything because he was young. When women are young they are afraid”, he narrated.
Currently, Thomas Zayas is in custody. He did not yet have a defense attorney listed on federal court records.
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