(PatriotWise.com) — Police in Wisconsin arrested dozens of people on May 10th on suspicion of multiple offenses, including murder-for-hire arrangements. Law enforcement officers detained thirty people on 43 felony counts, including mail fraud conspiracy, illegal firearms sales, and conspiring to defraud the Department of Labor.
Ronnell Bowman and Ronnie Jackson were charged with arranging a person’s death. Prosecutors say the two men agreed to carry out a murder between March and April 2021.
Police charged other defendants with submitting fraudulent benefit applications, including unemployment insurance. Further charges claim the defendants used public money, obtained fraudulently, to purchase drugs and weapons.
All defendants are described as members of a Milwaukee street gang known as the “Wild 100s,” or the “Shark Gang.”
The FBI, ATF, and Milwaukee police conducted the operation.
The murder-for-hire plot is one of several uncovered in Wisconsin recently. In 2021, a woman from Madison was sentenced to six years for attempting to hire a hitman. She tried to secure the hit using Bitcoin payments. Kelly Harper scrolled through sites on the dark web dedicated to murder-for-hire, where she posted a photo of her intended victim and his car.
Last December, a father and son, Joseph and Jason Hoppa, were charged in a murder-for-hire plot intended to kill the heir to the family estate – their son and brother. The father-son duo offered $40,000 to a hitman in the town of Berlin. The intended hitman developed a conscience and reported the scheme to the police. He then recorded a conversation with Joseph Hoppa, during which he repeated his desire for his son to be murdered.
More recently, in February 2023, Michael Liu tried to arrange for the murder of his in-laws while serving prison time for attacking them with a knife. Liu attempted to kill his ex-wife’s parents when he invaded their home with weapons. When in jail for attempted murder, he asked several inmates to arrange their killings. He now faces additional charges.
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