Derek Achong

A Trinida­di­an man liv­ing in south Flori­da, who ad­mit­ted to at­tempt­ing to hire a hit­man to mur­der his ex-girl­friend’s new lover, has been sen­tenced to sev­en years in prison.

Ryan Hadeed, 43, of Pem­broke Pines, Flori­da, plead­ed guilty to us­ing the mail to com­mit mur­der-for-hire in Ju­ly but was on­ly sen­tenced by US Dis­trict Judge William P Dim­itrouleas dur­ing a hear­ing in the US Dis­trict Court for the South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da on Wednes­day.

The max­i­mum penal­ty for the of­fence is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Pros­e­cu­tors re­port­ed­ly re­quest­ed that Hadeed re­ceive a nine-year sen­tence but the judge de­cid­ed it should be slight­ly less.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the US At­tor­ney’s Of­fice for the South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da, is­sued yes­ter­day, in Sep­tem­ber last year, Hadeed mailed a let­ter to an in­tend­ed hit man re­quest­ing his ser­vices.

The let­ter said: “I need some­one elim­i­nat­ed. I’ve been told you can arrange that. $10,000 all in cash and up­front. Per­son lo­cat­ed in Tam­pa.”

Hadeed al­leged­ly sent three let­ters with in­struc­tions and told the in­tend­ed hit man to sig­nal ac­cep­tance by mark­ing sheets of pa­per on a store-front win­dow.

On No­vem­ber 10 last year, Hadeed re­port­ed­ly sent the in­tend­ed hit­man $10,000, pic­tures of the in­tend­ed tar­get, his ad­dress, sched­ule and a dead­line for the mur­der.

Hadeed left the coun­try the same day but was ar­rest­ed when he re­turned to the coun­try, af­ter ev­i­dence of the crime was al­leged­ly dis­cov­ered in his suit­case dur­ing a sec­ondary cus­toms in­spec­tion.

The re­lease al­so not­ed that the in­tend­ed vic­tim is still ro­man­ti­cal­ly in­volved with Hadeed’s for­mer girl­friend.

The case was pros­e­cut­ed by As­sis­tant US At­tor­neys Joseph A Coo­ley and De­r­ic Za­c­ca.