FLORI­DA—A US dis­trict judge will on Oc­to­ber 26 sen­tence a 43-year-old Trinidad and To­ba­go-born na­tion­al, who has plead­ed guilty to a charge he used the US mail sys­tem to so­lic­it, plan and pay for the mur­der of his for­mer girl­friend’s new love in­ter­est.

Jus­tice William P Dim­itrouleas could al­so im­pose a 10-year term in fed­er­al prison and a US$250,000 fine on Ryan Hadeed, who lives in Pem­broke Pines, Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da.

Ac­cord­ing to the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ), Hadeed plead­ed guilty on Wednes­day in fed­er­al court to the charge of us­ing the mail to com­mit mur­der-for-hire.

It said that as part of his guilty plea, Hadeed ad­mit­ted that in Sep­tem­ber 2021, he mailed a let­ter to the in­tend­ed hit­man re­quest­ing mur­der ser­vices: “I need some­one elim­i­nat­ed. I’ve been told you can arrange that. $10,000 All in cash and up­front. Per­son lo­cat­ed in Tam­pa.”

The DOJ al­so re­port­ed that in the let­ter and in two oth­ers, Hadeed in­struct­ed the in­tend­ed hit­man to sig­nal his ac­cep­tance of the of­fer by post­ing marked sheets of pa­per on a store-front win­dow, among oth­er things.

On De­cem­ber 23, last year, Hadeed made his first ap­pear­ance in Fort Laud­erdale fed­er­al mag­is­trate court and ac­cord­ing to the com­plaint af­fi­davit, on No­vem­ber 10, the in­tend­ed hit­man re­ceived a fi­nal mail­ing from Hadeed that in­clud­ed a de­scrip­tion and pic­tures of the man that Hadeed want­ed killed, the vic­tim’s home ad­dress and like­ly trav­el sched­ule, as well as a dead­line for the mur­der.

Al­so in­side the en­ve­lope was $10,000 cash, says the af­fi­davit. It is al­leged that Hadeed left the coun­try on a one-way tick­et the same day the hit­man re­ceived the cash and pic­tures of the in­tend­ed vic­tim.

Law en­force­ment of­fi­cers learned of the plan. Dur­ing a sec­ondary cus­toms in­spec­tion of Hadeed when he re­turned from his in­ter­na­tion­al trip, ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence of the crime was un­cov­ered, ac­cord­ing to the af­fi­davit.

Pur­suant to a court-is­sued war­rant, law en­force­ment of­fi­cers ar­rest­ed Hadeed on De­cem­ber 22.

The in­tend­ed vic­tim, who re­mains alive, is ro­man­ti­cal­ly in­volved with Hadeed’s for­mer girl­friend, says the crim­i­nal com­plaint af­fi­davit.

Hadeed is charged with one count of us­ing in­ter­state com­merce fa­cil­i­ties – the US mail sys­tem – in the com­mis­sion of mur­der for hire, in vi­o­la­tion of 18 USC. If con­vict­ed, Hadeed faces up to 10 years in fed­er­al prison and a $250,000 fine.

Hadeed was a free­lancer con­trib­u­tor to Guardian Me­dia in T&T. His col­umn has since been dis­con­tin­ued. (CMC)