A custody battle between two parents escalated when the father, a licensed lawyer, tried hiring a hitman to kill his children’s mother, federal prosecutors said.
The murder-for-hire plot has now landed Allen Gessen in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California announced in an April 26 news release.
Gessen, an attorney licensed in New York, first schemed to have his former partner illegally deported from the U.S., but then decided it’d cost him less if she were killed, according to prosecutors.
He discussed this plan with an undercover FBI agent, whom he was introduced to in connection with an international money laundering investigation, prosecutors said.
In recorded conversations with the agent, who Gessen believed was a hitman with government connections, Gessen discussed bribing an immigration official to remove the mother of his two young children from the U.S., according to court documents.
When he realized this would cost him $100,000, he told the agent during a June 2022 meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, that “if there was a cheaper way to get rid of her that would be good too,” court documents state.
Gessen ultimately decided on the “more permanent” option involving killing his children’s mother following “contentious” child custody proceedings, according to prosecutors.
He wired $23,000 to a San Francisco bank account secretly owned by the FBI and sent the undercover agent a written agreement for “consulting services” for the murder-for-hire plot, prosecutors said. Then, in July 2022, he was indicted on one count of murder for hire.
Now Gessen, 49, of Massachusetts, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of the charge, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said.
Ahead of sentencing, prosecutors wrote that Gessen, according to “his own words,” was “dismissive of the fact that his two young children, aged three and eight at that time, would be motherless as they grew up.”
“He wanted her out of his life because she also loved her children and fought him for custody,” prosecutors said.
Federal public defenders Candis Lea Mitchell and Karthik Raju, who represented Gessen in the case, declined a request for comment from McClatchy News on April 29.
The first attempt to have the mother killed
Gessen told the undercover FBI agent his decision to have his former partner killed was “not a spur of the moment, emotional reaction,” according to the sentencing memo.
He said he previously looked into hiring hitmen to kill her and nearly paid $220,000 to a group of Israeli operatives, for the job, prosecutors said.
Gessen said he paid the group $10,000 to conduct surveillance, then decided against paying $210,000 more for the killing to be carried out, according to the sentencing memo.
In sentencing papers submitted on his behalf, Gessen’s federal defenders argued that the government misinterpreted his intentions.
“Under the strain of a dissolving relationship, defendant Allen Gessen, made the misguided choice to seek an unlawful permanent deportation of his former partner from the United States to gain sole custody of their two children,” his sentencing memo says.
His legal counsel contended he never had plans to kill the mother of his children.
“Though Mr. Gessen disputes the government’s interpretation of his intentions, he accepts responsibility for his actions,” his legal counsel wrote.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, argued that Gessen “showed a cool, cruel, calculated approach to the taking of an innocent woman’s life.”
In their sentencing memo, they wrote that he agreed in describing himself as a “very intelligent and an accomplished attorney.”
“He was not a bumbling idiot who happened to stumble into some unexpected situation.”
Doctor asks nurse to help her hire hitman to kill ex-husband in Kentucky, feds say
Ex-wife pays ‘hitman’ with diamond ring to kill woman living with ex-husband, feds say
Dad sought hitman on dark web to kill the parents of 5 children he adopted, feds say
Wife’s ‘charred’ body found in makeshift cemetery grave, feds say. Husband gets prison