Iranian charged with hiring Canadian hitmen to kill exiles in Maryland
The Justice Department charged one Iranian and two Canadian nationals for their alleged roles in a murder-for-hire plot against two Maryland residents, according to newly unsealed court documents.
Federal officials said the FBI thwarted the 2021 scheme, whose alleged conspirators include an “Iran-based narco-trafficker” and two Canadians, one of whom was a member of the Hells Angels motorbike gang. The man and woman intended as the plot’s victims, neither of whom were identified, were residing in Maryland after one of them defected from Iran, according to the DOJ.
Prosecutors named the mastermind of the plot as Iran-based Naji Sharifi Zindashti, 49, accusing him of recruiting a team of gunmen through an encrypted messaging service to travel to Maryland to assassinate the pair. According to court documents, Zindashti spent months concocting the plot with the assistance of Canadian nationals Damion Patrick John Ryan, 43, and Adam Richard Pearson, 29, who were named as co-defendants.
Zindashti offered to pay $370,000 for the murders, according to messages exchanged among the co-defendants between December 2020 and
March 2021, as described in court documents. In another message, Pearson said to Ryan: “We gotta erase his head from his torso,” according to the documents.
“Today’s charges show a pattern of Iranian groups trying to murder U.S. residents on U.S. soil,” Assistant Director Suzanne Turner of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division
said in a statement Monday. “Mr. Zindashti and his accomplices’ alleged plot is reprehensible, and the FBI will not tolerate such acts against U.S. residents, and we will continue to pursue these individuals until they are brought to the U.S. to face justice.”
Zindashti is based in Iran, the DOJ said; the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Iran. Prosecutors were cooperating with authorities in Canada over Ryan and Pearson, who are currently incarcerated there on unrelated offenses. Federal officials did not specify a potential motive, but accused Zindashti’s network of previously killing and kidnapping perceived critics of the Iranian government.
The same day the indictment was unsealed, U.S. Treasury officials announced a slew of sanctions against Zindashti, whom they accused of targeting Iranian dissidents at the behest of the country’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The sanctions prohibit Zindashti and key associates from engaging in any U.S.-linked transactions.
According to court documents, the defendants communicated using the Sky ECC encrypted messaging service, with Zindashti enlisting Ryan with an offer to “make some money,” who in turn recruited Pearson for a “job” in Maryland.
Prosecutors alleged that in January 2021, Ryan then exchanged messages with Pearson, who was illegally residing in Minnesota under an assumed name at the time, to discuss the logistics of traveling to Maryland. Pearson said he would “make sure I hit this guy in the head with ATLEAST half the clip,” according to the court documents.