Ryan Hadeed.
A man plotted to have his ex-girlfriend’s fiancé murdered, according to the United States Department of Justice. Ryan Hadeed, 43, reached out to a gun store owner through pseudonymous letters, offering $10,000 for the Coral Springs businessperson to carry out the hit, investigators said in an affidavit. It turned out, however, that this gun store owner was a “reliable” informant for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and reached out to officials on Sept. 29 after getting the first letter, authorities said.
“I need someone eliminated,” the letter author wrote, according to officials. “I’ve been told you can arrange that.”
The return address was a place in Hialeah, Florida, officials said. The name was Alan Smithee. Yes, the same pseudonym that film directors use to take their real names off a production.
“Information and payment will be sent once you accept,” the author wrote. “If not you will not be contacted again. Name and return address are fake.”
In any case, “Smithee” gave directions for the gun store owner to signal acceptance of the offer by marked sheet of paper on the store-front window after buying a cup of coffee from a local café, authorities said.
The gun store owner only half-followed directors, abstaining from the café visit, officials said. Nonetheless, “Smithee” wrote again, with the letter arriving on Oct. 15, officials said. He insisted on the murder plot, authorities said.
“Once confirmed, you will get the money in full and the details on the person to be eliminated,” he wrote. “This is important. You could take the money and do nothing. I would be out 10 gs and have to find someone else.” The author wrote that if this worked out, there was another job in a small Georgia town that would pay double or “you name your price.”
“Or no more,” the author wrote. “Tampa first.”
After a third letter, “Smithee” allegedly provided a final one with $10,000 in cash, and a letter including address and identification information on a 54-year-old Tampa man, including two pictures.
Using this, investigators found and interviewed the 54-year-old, who said he did not know who would want to kill him but presented an anonymous letter he got in May 2020. That letter was meant to have him break up with his fiancée, and had featured intimate photos of the woman, according to this version of events. In a follow-up interview with officials, that fiancée told investigators she suspected her ex-boyfriend Hadeed was behind the murder-for-hire plot.
She “told law enforcement that HADEED was infatuated with her to an unhealthy degree,” and he wanted her to leave the other man, authorities said.
Investigators said Hadeed had withdrawn $10,000 in cash on Nov. 5, five days before the gun store owner got the money package on Nov. 10. They also spotted his car several times in the parking lot of the informants business, adjacent to when the gun store owner posted the paper in reply to the letters. Hadeed had left for Trinidad and Tobago that same Nov. 10, but returned to the states on Dec. 15, with officials doing a customs inspection on his return, investigators said.
They found two phones, federal officials said. One, which did not have an assigned cell number, showed a picture of the ex-girlfriend, as well as an image of a website showing her name, place of work, address, and work phone number. A browser tab showed her LinkedIn account, officials said.
Hadeed’s attorney of record did not immediately respond to a Law&Crime request for comment.