Gunman arrested for nearly $1M crypto, jewelry robbery in Miami’s Morningside neighborhood, cops say

MIAMI — Miami police arrested a suspect on Tuesday in connection with an early-December armed robbery of nearly $1 million in cryptocurrency and valuables in the city’s Morningside neighborhood.

A Miami Police Department arrest report states that the victim first met Dontae Lamar Johnson, 28, of Royal Palm Beach, at the Kiki on the River nightclub near downtown while visiting Miami from out of state in October.

The report states that the two kept in touch and met up when the victim was back in South Florida on Dec. 8.

Investigators said the victim got into Johnson’s vehicle, and, at around 2:45 a.m., Johnson parked at a building at 5801 Biscayne Blvd.

That’s when police said Johnson “brandished a small black handgun” and demanded the victim ”give him everything he had.”

Johnson, police said, “forcefully took the victim’s watch off his wrist, and the victim took his chain and bracelet off and gave it to the defendant, which totaled approximately $413,500.”

But authorities said he wasn’t done.

The report states that Johnson demanded that the victim “open his cryptocurrency wallet and send it to him.”

“As the victim was going through his cryptocurrency wallet, (Johnson) continuously told him that he would kill him if he didn’t comply,” it states.

The victim sent Johnson $562,155 worth of crypto, police said, then escaped and called an Uber, eventually reporting the robbery to MPD two days later.

The report states that the victim provided detectives with Johnson’s “fiddybandz1″ Instagram account.

Authorities said MPD’s Tactical Robbery Unit found Johnson in the Edgewater neighborhood on Tuesday, arresting him on an armed robbery charge and finding a small black Ruger LCP .380 pistol in his center console.

In Miami-Dade bond court on Wednesday, Judge Victoria Sigler found probable cause for the armed robbery charge and ordered that Johnson be held pending a pre-trial detention hearing.

“I bet he wants his cryptocurrency back, too,” Sigler, referring to the alleged victim, quipped just before Johnson walked out of court.

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