(WHTM) — A man will spend more than 15 years in prison for orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot to kill two Pennsylvania residents, the Department of Justice announced Monday.
Xin Guan Guo, 48, of North Carolina, will also spend three years on supervised release once he is released from prison, the DOJ said. He was going to pay an undercover agent $30,000 to murder his business partner and someone who had a relationship with the partner.
“The defendant orchestrated the death of two people,” U.S. Attorney Metcalf said in a statement. “It does not matter whether you pull the trigger or pay someone else to do it. It also does not matter that, in this case, the plan failed. Anyone who takes action to take the life of another faces a lengthy stay in federal prison.”
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The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was made aware Sept. 30 that Guo was looking to hire a hitman. The DOJ said text messages detailing the plan that Guo created were sent to investigators.
In phone calls the ATF was monitoring, Guo mentioned the plan, saying he’d pay $15,000 for each murder and that he arranged to meet who he thought was a hitman in October so he could give the hitman money to buy a gun, according to the DOJ.
The “hitman” turned out to be an undercover ATF agent. After meeting with the undercover agent in October, Guo paid them $2,500 and said the rest would come after the two people were murdered. Once he left, he was arrested.
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“Xin Guang Guo thought he could get away with paying a killer to commit two murders for him, and even wanted photos of the bloody crime,” ATF Philadelphia Field Division Special Agent in Charge Eric DeGree said. “Our ATF Special Agents caught him cash-in-hand, and now he’s going to prison for a long time for his insidious crime.”
Assistant United States Attorney Amanda McCool prosecuted the case.
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