A pair of Bronx youngsters got here up with a brand new twist on an outdated social media rip-off to launch a Fb-fueled kidnapping and carjacking spree, they confessed to the FBI — and it may put them behind bars for all times.
The terrifying trickery, detailed in a nine-page grievance filed to the Southern District of New York by FBI Particular Agent Justin Grey, seems to be the newest in a string of crimes orchestrated on Fb Market, the social media large’s well-liked peer-to-peer gross sales platform.
However not like earlier circumstances in Murfreesboro, Tenn., Detroit, Mich., and New Haven, Conn. — the place thieves posed as consumers to steal vehicles that harmless Fb customers supplied on the market — the Bronx duo flipped the script, luring their victims with a faux on-line advert.
In keeping with the grievance, Diante Fernandes, 19, and 18-year-old Mark Francis marketed a pink 2019 Hyundai Ioniq on the market on Fb Market, posing as a vendor named “Tagem.”
A sufferer, not named within the grievance, responded and organized to fulfill Tagem for a take a look at drive on Highland Avenue in Yonkers, a residential road of low-rise condominium buildings and outdated Victorian houses, on the night of Sept. 26.
The sufferer and a companion drove to the situation in a Honda belonging to one of many two. There they allegedly met Fernandes, Francis and an unidentified third man.
All 5 took a brief drive within the pink Hyundai, then returned to Highland Avenue to debate the sale. There, based on the grievance, one of many supposed sellers pulled a black handgun, pointed it on the two victims and compelled them again into the automobile.
As one of many thieves drove the group round Yonkers, his armed confederate allegedly took the victims’ cellphones, wallets and the keys to their Honda earlier than dumping the victims on the busy intersection of Nepperhan and Yonkers avenues, a few mile away. Neither sufferer was injured.
On Sept. 27, Fernandes and Francis allegedly pulled the identical rip-off, once more utilizing the pink Hyundai as bait. This time, the assembly place was set for leafy Sycamore Avenue, a slender road of well-kept houses within the Riverdale part of the Bronx.
The sufferer and a companion arrived in a 2021 Toyota RAV4, the Riverdale Press reported. However after they met the 2 fake sellers for his or her deliberate take a look at drive, the thieves are mentioned to have pulled out a black handgun and brought the victims’ wallets, telephones and automobile keys.
In keeping with the grievance, Fernandes and Francis then kidnapped one sufferer, forcing him into the Toyota at gunpoint, and drove off — leaving the opposite sufferer, and the pink Hyundai, behind.
For the subsequent three hours, Fernandes and Francis allegedly drove their hostage “across the New York Metropolis space,” stopping twice at completely different banks and forcing him to withdraw a complete of $6,000 from his bank card account. They left him, unhurt, in New Hyde Park in Lengthy Island, based on an area information account.
Within the meantime, the Yonkers victims and the one left stranded in Riverdale had alerted police. When Fernandes and Francis drove the Toyota to the Bronx website the place they’d stashed the stolen Honda, cops have been ready.
Contained in the RAV4 was a loaded Sarsilmaz Sar9 handgun, one of many 4 stolen telephones and the keys to the purloined Honda. Each teenagers have been positioned beneath arrest and, based on the FBI’s Grey, admitted participating within the spree.
The 2, who appeared earlier than Justice of the Peace Decide Judith C. McCarthy on Sept. 28, have been detained on expenses of carjacking, kidnapping, conspiracy, firearms possession and Hobbs Act theft — a federal statute making use of to crimes that intrude with interstate commerce. They face most sentences of life in jail if convicted on all expenses.
FBI analysts warned in 2018 that “violent legal actors” are “very possible” to make use of Fb Market and related platforms to focus on victims, based on a ProPublica report launched in September.
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