‘Pathetic Loser’ Bureaucrat Allegedly Bullied 12-Year-Old Girl Into Sending Nude Pics
A government employee at Veterans Affairs in Florida has been arrested for intimidating a 12-year-old girl into sending him nude photos, then circulating that to fellow students.
The months-long investigation into Thomas Zayas—a 45-year-old father—involved the FBI, VA investigators, and Orlando’s local sheriff’s office is described in federal court documents.
Zayas is accused of faking an online persona, “Romeo,” on WhatsApp and trying to groom a middle school girl into a predatory sexual relationship last summer. When the girl rebuffed his advances, he then allegedly created another account—Romeo’s fake sister “Millie,” an aggressive MMA fighter—to intimidate the girl into sending naked pictures of herself. Weeks later, those pictures made their way to other students along with bullying accusations that the girl had sexually transmitted diseases.
When the school principal and police got involved, an investigation spanning three different law enforcement agencies eventually pointed to Zayas, a VA employee based in Orlando. The phone number in the WhatsApp text message conversation belonged to Zayas, and flowers he bought her were ordered online with his government computer, the FBI claimed in an affidavit. When the Orange County Sheriff’s Office raided his apartment in January, investigators say they found a phone Zayas used to manage the separate personae.
Although Zayas denied everything during a recorded interview, investigators claim he changed his tune when they stopped taping. He allegedly admitted that the whole thing started as a “joke,” but when the girl “cut ‘Romeo’ off, Zayas felt he needed to teach [her] a lesson.”
“Zayas stated, ‘I’m a pathetic loser’ and stated that he had not had a date in the six years since his wife left him,” the FBI affidavit said.
He was arrested on Friday, according to Glamarys Beltran, the estranged mother of his two children.
“Papá, el está jodido [he’s fucked],” she told The Daily Beast when reached on Monday. “He was very manipulative, and he was mentally and emotionally abusive,” she said during an interview in Spanish.
Beltran confirmed several details of the case to The Daily Beast, recounting her conversation on Friday with Orange County Sheriff’s Office Det. Eddie Turso, who worked on the case and is also listed in the documents.
Beltran, who never married Zayas but separated from him and fought over custody of their children, claimed her own relationship with him began under suspicious circumstances when she was 18 and living at home with her parents. They met online and she remembered him saying he was 23 but later found out he was actually 31.
“I felt dirty. I felt disgusted. I asked myself, ‘Why?’ But a month later, I found I was already pregnant. I never said anything because I was young. When women are young they’re afraid,” she said.
Calls to the FBI, VA, and local sheriff’s office were not returned Monday during the Presidents Day holiday. Calls to Zayas went unanswered, as he is now in custody. He did not yet have a listed defense attorney in federal court records.
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