HARTFORD — A Florida man was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Hartford to 11 years in prison for his participation in a violent Danbury kidnapping in 2024 that federal officials say was found to be related to an investigation into a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency heist.
Anthony Pena, 24, of Miami Gardens, Florida, was also sentenced to two years of supervised release in a kidnapping that targeted two victims, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut David Sullivan said in a news release. Pena was one of six men arrested by Danbury police soon after the incident.
On Aug. 25, Danbury police received multiple 911 calls from witnesses who said they saw several males assault and force a man into a white work van, and officers encountered the van on Clapboard Ridge Road near East Gate Road, where they tried to stop it, Sullivan said.
Sullivan said the van took off at a high rate of speed before it was disabled in a crash approximately a mile away on Cowperthwaite Street. Pena, Angel Borrero, and two others dressed in black fled from the van on foot, and officers who arrived were able to free a man and a woman who had been bound with duct tape in the back of the van, Sullivan said.
Both victims were transported to the hospital, Sullivan said, and the man had serious injuries to his face and arm.
The victims told police they had been in a Lamborghini Urus when they were rear-ended by a Honda Civic on Damia Drive in Danbury and a white van cut in front of their vehicle, Sullivan said.
“The victims were then forcibly removed from their vehicle, dragged into the van, and bound with duct tape,” Sullivan said. “When the male victim resisted, he was punched in the face and hit repeatedly with a baseball bat, both outside and inside the van, by Pena and others. The victims were told several times that they would be killed.”
Sullivan said Pena, Borrero, and the two others were arrested in different spots within a quarter-mile from the site of the van’s crash.
Two others who police say participated in the kidnapping, and the Honda Civic, were found at a rental home in Roxbury with a baseball bat inside of the car, Sullivan said. The victims’ Lamborghini, which had a blood-stained baseball bat inside, was found abandoned in the woods off of East King Street, Sullivan said.
“The kidnapping was intended to facilitate the extortion of the victims’ son, who is suspected of participating in the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said Pena has been held in custody since his arrest, adding that he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and kidnapping Jan. 10.
Borrero and three others who were involved have pleaded guilty but have yet to be sentenced, Sullivan said.
