Former FIU student found guilty of hiring hit man to kill prosecutor, FBI agent
A former Florida International student who is already imprisoned for threatening to kill his relatives faces more time behind bars after a jury found him guilty of hiring a hit man to murder a federal prosecutor, an FBI agent and others.
Anthony Frederick Brillante II, 36, was convicted on Friday of attempted murder of a U.S. government employee, solicitation of a crime of violence and witness tampering. Brillante is expected to receive several more years in prison at his sentencing in early October before U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian in Fort Lauderdale federal court.
Brillante’s criminal activity began while he was enrolled at FIU and continued after the FBI arrested him in August 2022, according to federal prosecutors Lawrence LaVecchio and Deric Zacca.
Brillante was initially charged with cyber-harassing his relatives in New York, including using hundreds of phone numbers to send his cousin, her husband and their 12-year-old daughter thousands of threatening phone calls and text messages for more than a year, according to court records. Brillante, who spoofed the victims by disguising his identity as the sender, threatened to shoot them in the face and run them over with a car in the cyber messages.
The investigation led by the FBI revealed that Brillante was also sending similar threatening messages to another cousin and her husband in Texas.
At his first trial in 2023, Brillante was convicted of cyber-harassment charges and sentenced to nine years in prison.
But just before the start of trial that October, the FBI launched a sting operation against Brillante while he was held without bond at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
On Oct. 29, 2023, Brillante met with a federal undercover agent posing as a hit man and associate of Brillante’s cellmate. Brillante recruited the agent to kill an assistant U.S. attorney, another FBI agent who was investigating the cyber-harassment case, and his relatives in New York, according to an indictment. Brillante, through intermediaries and bank transfers, paid out a total of $40,000 to execute the deadly plot, the indictment says.
His criminal activity on the eve of the initial trial became the basis for additional charges, which led to Brillante’s second trial this month. The Fort Lauderdale jury found him guilty of all 22 counts in the indictment.
