John Jefferson
Left: a photo of the suspect allegedly handing 25 $100 bills to a Western Union clerk. Right: Reshma Massarone in a driver’s license photo (Images via court documents).
A bank manager in New York who admittedly plotted to murder her brother-in-law on Facebook Messenger, sent thousands of dollars from a Western Union kiosk inside of a Walgreens, and texted the receipt on WhatsApp was sentenced to nearly a decade in federal prison on Tuesday, but not before she claimed to be a victim of a 25-year “harassment” campaign that started when she didn’t marry the man at age 15.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Reshma Massarone, now 40, is looking at nine and a half years of federal prison time — 114 months, six months short of what the government sought — for the failed plot on her brother-in-law’s life between July 2023 and August 2023 after pleading guilty to the crime in mid-March.
Massarone swore on her kids’ lives that she would never betray “Individual-1,” described as a years-long friend of the victim who “happened to be a law enforcement officer in Guyana,” if he helped orchestrate the murder of her brother-in-law while he was traveling in South America.
According to the DOJ criminal complaint, Massarone chatted up “Individual-1” on Facebook Messenger between July 20, 2023, and Aug. 16, 2023 and offered him $10,000 in cash to find a hitman “who could get the job done.”
“No more text,” Massarone said at the end of an exchange about getting “rid of” the brother-in-law.
A day later Massarone, a bank manager, was caught on video at a Walgreens in Orange County, N.Y., and brought $2,500 in cash with her — to be wired from a Western Union kiosk under the belief that the money would go to a hitman “Individual-1” knew.
After the transfer was completed, Massaorne sent a photo of the Western Union receipt that included the address of the Walgreens in Pine Bush, New York.
“Hi,” she allegedly said from a WhatsApp account with the name Reshma Bhoopersaud.
The would-be plot completely unraveled in the ensuing days, as both the target of the plot and his wife “went to the United States Embassy in Guyana to report that Massarone, the defendant, had place a hit on the Victim” to take place as soon as July 25, 2023 — and the married couple said they learned this information from “Individual-1.”
Thereafter, Massarone suspect and “Individual-1” spoke on their cell phones in Guyanese as “Individual-1” recorded the call — unbeknownst to Massarone. A DEA special agent and native Guyanese speaker helped translate the call.
During the call, Massarone made clear to “Individual-1” that she wanted her brother-in-law dead, even as she acknowledged there was “[n]o turning back” now.
“Just he, just he,” she said, according to the feds.
“Good,” the man answered.
At the end of the call, Massarone said “So delete my number before the man or anybody catch.”
On a follow-up call, she agreed that the solicited murder should look like a robbery. She also expressed hope that the hitman would “get away,” the complaint said.
“I have to go back to work. Make sure you delete me,” the defendant told “Individual-1” at the end of the call.
Prosecutors said that Massarone at one point suggested “rat poison can do a great job” and that she became frustrated when “Individual-1” seemed to be “all talk and no action.”
“Come on do the thing and I will take care of you,” she said. “Either way, if I find somebody to do the job you’re going to get blame, so cut the bulls— and let’s get it done.”
In sentencing memoranda, while the government took the position that Massarone “minimized her conduct” and “lied” by “failing to tell the whole truth about the crime” in her plea allocution, the defense pushed back with a transcript of the defendant acknowledging that she knew what she did was against the law.
The defense also claimed that Massarone acted “completely out of character” and in a “state of a rage” because she was provoked by the brother-in-law through “twenty five-year systematic harassment.”
Massarone described the man as “scorned” because he tried and failed to marry her when she was 15. She said this “offended” her parents, so the suitor was turned down, but he went on to marry her 16-year-old sister instead.
The documents asserted that the man arranged for Massarone to marry two different men, described as sometimes unemployed alcoholics, marriages that failed. Though she tried to advance professionally in banking, the man “continued to ruin her professional life by systematically calling her employment in an attempt to get her fired,” Massarone said, putting the term “victim” in scare quotes.
“The man spent the last 25 years attempting to ruin Ms. Massarone in every way possible, including but not limited to, harassing her beautiful and highly intelligent eldest daughter who the ‘victim’ attempted to get disqualified from a beauty pageant and is a Dean’s List student in college,” the defense memo said. “What prevents this man from calling up a law school she intends on applying to? What prevents this so-called victim from continuing his disparaging remarks on social media of Ms. Massarone’s youngest daughter or husband?”
“Nothing, is the answer,” the memo added.
After sentencing, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams slammed Massarone for the “chilling plan to have a member of her own family murdered for the low price of ten thousand dollars.”
“Her plan was unthinkably heartless,” Williams said.
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