A San Francisco-based federal judge is sending an attorney to prison for ten years, after he hired a hitman to kill his estranged partner, a Zimbabwean fashion icon, but unfortunately for him the hitman was actually an undercover FBI agent.
Priscilla Chigariro is not a household name in the US, but the model-turned-entrepreneur is well-known in her native Zimbabwe as the founder of Zimbabwe Fashion Week, and a worldwide series of events called Africa Art, Fashion, and Food Festivals. But behind that glitz and glamor was an apparently very unhappy relationship with Massachusetts attorney Allen Gessen, with the two separating and Chigariro getting custody of their two children.
So Gessen hired “a guy” in San Francisco, promising him $100,000 if he could bribe an immigration official to have Chigariro deported. Gessen then changed his mind and added another $50,000 to have his guy flat-out murder her. And according to KPIX, Gessen “had previously tried to hire people to kill her, but that they had jacked up their price to $210,000.”
He maybe should have gone with the $210,000 hired killer! Because his “guy” in San Francisco was an undercover FBI agent, and now Gessen has been sentenced to ten years in federal prison on murder-for-hire charges.
The undercover FBI agent was already onto Gessen over a separate money laundering scheme, when Gessen’s interest turned to finding a hired killer.
“Gessen wired a total of $23,000 to an FBI undercover bank account in San Francisco to carry out the murder,” according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. “Around the same time, 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. Gessen also provided to the undercover FBI agent a target package containing details about his former partner’s whereabouts, schedule, and lifestyle habits."
Gessen had already been found guilty of the crime in July 2022. After his ten-year prison term, he’s also sentenced to three years of supervised release.
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Image: Priscilla Chigariro via Facebook
