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Friday's Final Word
A federal jury last week convicted a Florida man of hiring a hitman to kill a federal prosecutor and an FBI agent and attempting to killing the victims of a cyber harassment case against him before that case went to trial.
According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, Anthony Brillante II, 36, was awaiting trial on cyber harassment charges after he allegedly “spoofed hundreds of different phone numbers to send three victims — his cousin, her husband, and their 12-year-old daughter — tens of thousands of phone calls and text message over a 15-month period between 2021 and 2022, including countless explicit threats to kill them.”
The messages included threats to shoot the family members in the face and run over them with a car. The family lived in New York, while Brillante was a student at Florida International University for most of the time period. The investigation also found that he sent similar threats to another cousin and her husband, who lived in Texas.
Brillante was arrested in August 2022. In October 2023, investigators said, Brillante paid $40,000 toward his plot to kill the prosecutor and FBI agent in the case, as well as the family members.
On October 29, 2023, the day before his trial was to begin, he met someone he thought was a hitman but was actually an undercover FBI agent.
Brillante’s harassment trial went on as planned, and he was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Now he’ll receive new sentencing after he was convicted on charges of attempted murder of a federal employee, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice. The sentencing is scheduled for October 1.
