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A man who tried to pay an undercover FBI agent to kill the mother of his children has been found guilty of murder for hire.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California, Allen Gessen, 48, was initially swept up in an FBI probe into international money laundering. Gessen, then living in Massachusetts and working as an attorney, unknowingly made contact with an undercover FBI agent in 2022. Gessen first planned to bribe an immigration official to deport his estranged partner, with whom he shared two small children, so he could get full custody, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
During a summer 2022 meeting with the undercover agent, however, Gessen’s plan turned even more sinister. According to prosecutors, Gessen began musing that the “cheaper way to get rid of her” was to have the woman murdered. He allegedly told the agent that he reached out to an international “hit team,” which told him it would cost over $200,000 to complete the job.
Gessen decided this was too steep a cost, and the undercover agent offered to charge $50,000 instead. Prosecutors say Gessen “agreed to pay a $25,000 deposit and have the remaining $25,000 be due after her murder.” At a subsequent meeting, Gessen gave the agent a $2,000 gold coin and then transferred the remaining $23,000 deposit to the agent’s San Francisco bank account.
“Gessen also sent to the undercover FBI agent a written agreement containing a promise to pay for phony ‘consulting services’ as a method to disguise the true nature of the funds,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a statement. “Gessen also provided to the undercover FBI agent a target package containing details about his former partner’s whereabouts, schedule, and lifestyle habits.”
In July 2022, Gessen was arrested and indicted by a grand jury for his scheme. Last week, San Francisco’s FBI field office announced Gessen was found guilty of one charge of murder for hire at trial. He is now awaiting sentencing; the maximum sentence is up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
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