Miami Crypto Queen Accused of Supplying Jan. 6 Plans

Now, she’s on the coronary heart of nationwide intrigue, accused of offering a far-right group with an in depth plan to overturn a presidential election.

Eryka Gemma Flores is thought in Miami’s cryptocurrency circles as a enterprise capitalist and fierce advocate for digital foreign money. She based town’s Bitcoin Center, a tech schooling hub within the downtown space, and supported Mayor Francis Suarez’s efforts to prop town up because the nation’s “crypto capital.” She has described herself because the “Godmother of the Miami Crypto Scene.”

But in response to a New York Times report, Flores (recognized within the story as “Eryka Gemma”) had pursuits that prolonged nicely past the cryptocurrency world.

One week earlier than the January 6, 2021 rebellion, the report states, Flores supplied then-Proud Boys chief Enrique Tarrio with a doc titled “1776 Returns,” which outlined a plan to storm authorities buildings across the Capitol, together with the House and Senate workplace buildings and the U.S. Supreme Court. The doc is a core part of the seditious conspiracy cost for which Tarrio and different members of the Proud Boys are presently on trial in Washington, D.C. courtroom.

Text messages launched as proof within the trial present correspondence during which an “Eryk-A” transmits the doc to Tarrio round 12:50 p.m. on December 30, 2020.

“If you don’t like my plan, let me know. I’ll pitch elsewhere,” one message to Tarrio reads. “But I need you to be the executor and benefitor of my brilliance.”

When describing the messages, federal prosecutors within the Tarrio trial have referenced the sender as “Erika Flores,” noting that she pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to reply questions concerning the 1776 Returns doc after receiving a subpoena final yr. (She has not been charged within the case.)

One witness, prosecutors say, described Flores as a former girlfriend of Tarrio.

Samuel Armes, president of the Florida Blockchain Business Association, testified earlier than a congressional committee that he believed the 1776 Returns plan was derived from a “war-gaming” doc that he shared with Flores, whom he knew via the Florida cryptocurrency neighborhood. His doc was a thought train in what would occur if a sitting president refused to depart workplace, he claimed.

Armes, a former analyst for the U.S. State Department who’s educated as an intelligence operative, informed the committee that Flores had taken his “concepts as an inspiration, and her or some group of individuals then turned it into ‘1776 Returns.'”

During the proceedings, Armes was requested why Flores had been claiming Armes authored the 1776 Returns plan and implored her to share it with Tarrio — to which he responded, “I suppose she’s simply blame-shifting.”

Who Is Flores?

A self-described libertarian, Flores was the youngest delegate in Washington state to work for the 2012 Ron Paul presidential marketing campaign. She has attributed her love for cryptocurrency to her roots in libertarian politics, at one level noting that lots of the early embracers of the Bitcoin motion adopted an “anarchist” ideology.

Flores graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach in 2014 with a bachelor’s diploma in aeronautics science and obtained a non-public pilot license. Later, whereas working for a financial institution within the plane leasing division, she recalled asking a big-time banker what he thought of Bitcoin throughout a video convention name.

“He laughed at me, and everybody within the convention name laughed at me,” Flores stated throughout a 2019 interview. “So I used to be like, because of this there’s one thing to this…Then I simply went down the rabbit gap.”

After her stint within the plane buying and selling and leasing trade, she pivoted to cryptocurrency, launching “Miami International Bitcoin” in 2015, which Flores described as a “meet-up group” that ultimately became a Facebook neighborhood the place folks would talk about cryptocurrency.

Her present bio on Twitter (@bankoferyka) reads: “paradigm shifts create prosperity. #sovereign #non-public pilot.” She’s described in courtroom paperwork as a “romantic curiosity” of former Proud Boys chief Tarrio, who can be from Miami.

click on to enlarge

Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys at a Virginia rally in January 2020.

Photo by Anthony Crider

What Is Her Connection to Miami?

Flores has been described as a “pillar” and “the godmother” of Miami’s cryptocurrency neighborhood.

In 2019, she co-founded the Miami Blockchain Center alongside self-proclaimed “Bitcoin Pioneer” Nick Spanos a couple of blocks away from Bayfront Park in downtown Miami, which they described as an “incubator, occasion area and co-working area” to coach builders, entrepreneurs, and traders on blockchain and cryptocurrencies.