A trio of aspiring rappers broke into their home and demanded that the couple turn over $20,000, prosecutors say.”
The gang’s alleged ringleader, Kejuan Brandon Campbell, 26, is a star in the local Broward underground rap scene who goes by the stage name Splash Zanotti.
The three are accused of kidnaping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, crimes that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted. Alexander-Wilcox is also accused of being a felon in possession of a weapon. No charges have been filed in the alleged rape.
A suburban kidnapping:
Here’s how court records say the kidnapping happened.
About 3:30 p.m. Oct. 11, Alexander-Wilcox went to the victims’ window and asked for “Anthony.” The wife told him they hadn’t talked to Anthony, their nephew, in years.
Anthony-Wilcox said he couldn’t hear her well, but when the wife opened the front door to talk, he put a gun to her forehead and barged inside.
plash Zanotti and James, armed and wearing masks, followed him. The three men ordered the husband and wife to the ground at gunpoint and told them to download a mobile payment service called Cash App onto their phones and begin transferring $20,000 dollars to the alleged assailants’ accounts.
Anthony, the three men said, owed them a debt. And they were there to collect it from his family.
Cash App didn’t work, though it’s unclear from court records why.
Splash Zanotti then had the wife write out checks and forced her at gunpoint to accompany him to cash them.
First they tried the Amscot at 314 N. University Drive, with no luck. Amscot declined to process the transactions. Then Splash Zanotti drove the wife to the Publix at 600 University Drive, where he tried to use her debit card to purchase $20,000 in money orders. Court records say Publix also denied the transaction.
Frustrated, Splash Zanotti took the wife back to her house, where the three intruders spent the night. Sometime after midnight, the criminal affidavit says, one of the three men raped the wife at gunpoint.
The next morning, Splash Zanotti drove the wife to the SunTrust bank in Miramar and another in Pembroke Pines. Both banks were closed.
“Campbell got angry and frustrated,” the criminal affidavit states. “He began using his cellphone to conduct an online search to determine why the banks were closed. It was then he realized it was Columbus Day, a federal holiday.”
After abortive attempts to withdraw the $20,000 at the Miami Casino and a Walmart in North Miami, Splash Zanotti returned with the wife to the couple’s home. There, he told the wife to call her bank and increase her ATM withdrawal limits. With the limits increased, Splash Zanotti, the affidavit states, was able to drive the wife to three separate ATM’s where they withdrew $20,000 in cash.
Catching the rappers
The first is a cellphone video shot by James. The video shows Splash Zanotti sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, counting money from a large stack of dollars. The video shows Alexander-Wilcox in the back seat of the car.
“Don’t worry, I ain’t posting this,” James says in the video, according to court records.
But just over a month later, James was arrested after cops from the Broward Sheriff’s Office pulled over a car in which he was a passenger. After running a background check on James, the officers discovered that he had an outstanding warrant for armed robbery, arrest paperwork says. The cops also discovered that James, a convicted felon, was carrying a gun.
The cops seized James’ cellphone. On it was the video of Splash Zanotti counting cash.