Iranian, two Canadian nationals facing federal charges in Minnesota for alleged murder-for-hire plot

Newly unsealed federal charges in Minnesota outline an international murder-for-hire scheme that targeted Iranian dissidents and opposition activists for kidnappings and killings.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said Monday that an Iranian man and a “team of gunmen” that included a Minnesota resident used encrypted messaging to orchestrate a failed assassination plot against two Maryland residents.

“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,” Luger said in a statement announcing the charges.

Naji Sharifi Zindashti, 49, Damion Patrick John Ryan, 43, and Adam Richard Pearson, 29, were indicted by a federal grand jury in December, but charges remained under seal until Monday.

According to the indictment, the three used an encrypted messaging service called “SkyECC” to recruit others to travel into the United States to kill for them and discuss plans for carrying out the murders. They are accused of carrying out the scheme from December 2020 to March 2021, and are charged with trying to kill two Maryland residents who previously fled to the United States after one of them defected from Iran.

Also Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department issued designations against Zindashti and several “key associates” who are now barred from any “transaction or dealing that involves a U.S. person or occurs in the United States.”

“To those in Iran who plot murders on U.S. soil and the criminal actors who work with them, let today’s charges send a clear message: The Department of Justice will pursue you as long as it takes — and wherever you are — and deliver justice,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Attorneys were not listed for the three men. Zindashti, also known as “Big” or “Big Guy,” is still living in Iran, according to prosecutors. Both Ryan and Pearson are incarcerated in Canada on unrelated offenses.

Assistant Director Suzanne Turner of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division said the indictment showed “a pattern of Iranian groups trying to murder U.S. residents on U.S. soil.” She added that “we will continue to pursue these individuals until they are brought to the U.S. to face justice.”

The indictment mentions an unnamed and uncharged “Co-Conspirator 1,” who used the encrypted SkyECC service to share photographs of victims’ faces and maps that identified where the victims could be found. Logistics hashed out on SkyECC also included negotiating payment for expenses associated with the murders.

Co-Conspirator 1, like Zindashti, is an Iranian resident and allegedly helped Zindashti execute the plot to murder the two people in Maryland. Co-Conspirator 1 tasked Ryan, identified as a “full-patch member of the outlaw Hells Angels Motorcycle Club” to assemble a team of gunmen to travel to Maryland and carry out the murders.

According to charges, Ryan asked Pearson, a Canadian resident who illegally lived in Minnesota under an assumed name, for help with a “job” in Maryland. Pearson said he had people he trusted and that “shooting is probably easiest thing for them.” He told Ryan that he may charge more than $100,000 for the job after Ryan instructed that he needed at least two, likely three people, including a driver to carry it out.

Ryan told Pearson that he would “get u what u want” but needed the job “to be over kill lol.” Pearson told him he would encourage his recruits to “shoot [the victim] in the head a lot [to] make example” and offered to do the job himself if it was time sensitive.

In another message, Pearson told Ryan that he would tell his contacts that “we gotta erase his head from his torso.”

Zindashti, having been briefed on the plot’s progress, agreed on a payment of $350,000 and $20,000 for travel expenses on Jan. 30, 2021. Minutes later, Ryan told Co-Conspirator 1 that “We have a 4 man team ready.”

All three face charges of conspiracy to use interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire. Pearson is also being charged with separate counts of possession of a firearm by a fugitive and by an alien unlawfully in the United States.