On July 11, 2025, a federal jury sitting in Ft. Lauderdale found Anthony Brillante II, 36, guilty of attempted murder of an employee of the United States, 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 charges stemmed from a plot engaged in by the defendant to murder the federal prosecutor and FBI Special Agent who investigated and prosecuted him for cyber harassment, by hiring a hitman to kill them.
He was also found guilty of attempting to kill the witnesses and victims of his cyber harassment case before the start of his federal cyber harassment trial on October 30, 2023.
In August of 2022, the FBI arrested Brillante for cyber harassing his family in New York. Brillante, a student at FIU during most of the time of the crimes, 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 messages over a 15-month period between 2021 and 2022, including countless explicit threats to kill them.
The messages included threatening to shoot them in the in the face and running them over with a car. The federal cyber harassment investigation established that Brillante was also sending similar threatening messages to another cousin and her husband, who both resided in Texas.
In October 2023, just before the start of his federal cyber harassment trial, Brillante directed and paid a total of $40,000 in furtherance of the murder plot.
On October 29, 2023, the day before his cyber harassment trial was scheduled to begin, Brillante met with an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a hitman, and enlisted him to commit the murders of the prosecuting Assistant United States Attorney, the investigating FBI special agent, and the victims of his cyber harassment case in order to obstruct his federal trial.
Despite his efforts, Brillante was convicted in his first trial of cyber harassment and ultimately sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment.
Sentencing in the murder-for-hire case is scheduled for October 1, 2025.
