Two Canadian members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang plotted with an Iranian drug trafficker to kill a pair of dissidents who were living in Maryland, the Department of Justice and federal officials said Monday.
Naji Sharifi Zindashti, aka “Big Guy,” who has ties to Iran’s intelligence services, had been communicating with Damion Patrick John Ryan for a month about various “jobs” when, in January 2021, he brought up “a specific job in the United States,” according to a federal grand jury indictment.
Ryan, who was contacting Zindashti through an “encrypted communication service,” said it would be “challenging” but he “might have someone to do it,” the indictment states.
That day, the indictment states, Ryan reached out to Adam Richard Pearson who said he’d need two to three people, including a driver, and “may charge over $100,000 for the job.”
Ryan replied he would “get u what you want” but stressed that this needed to be “over kill lol,” U.S. officials said.
According to the indictment, Pearson promised to deliver that gruesome message, allegedly stating that he would encourage the recruits for the job to “shoot [the victim] in the head a lot [to] make example,” and “We gotta erase his head from his torso.”
In the end, neither of the Iranian dissidents lost their heads or lives.
“As alleged, Mr. Zindashti and his team of gunmen, including a Minnesota resident, used an encrypted messaging service to orchestrate an assassination plot against two individuals,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger for the District of Minnesota said in a statement. “Thanks to the skilled work of federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents, this murder-for-hire conspiracy was disrupted and the defendants will face justice.”
Zindashti, who officials think is in Iran, Ryan and Pearson are each charged with conspiracy to use interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.
Pearson, who was living illegally in Minnesota at the time of the alleged plot, is…
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