A federal judge last week sentenced Mohammed Chowdhury, 47, to 92 months in federal prison for trying to hire somebody to kill his wife after she kicked him out of their house and took up with another man - whom he also wanted dead.

Chowdhury's initial planned killer absconded with the money Chowdhury paid him - and then contacted the FBI, which sent a trio of undercover agents to convince Chowdhury to hire them instead. He did, but only after trying to bargain them down from their initial $10,000 price for each murder to just $4,000 apiece, which he told them was all he could afford as a convenience-store clerk. And he wanted to pay on the installment plan.

Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi immigrant, pleaded guilty in January to two counts of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.

In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors called for a nine-year sentence:

"Approximately a year and a half years ago, Mohammed Chowdhury hired someone he thought was a contract killer, provided detailed information, instructions, and a $500 down payment, and requested that this individual kill his ex-wife and her new partner in an act of revenge for leaving him. Indeed, Chowdhury checked every box necessary to arrange for his ex-wife's and the new partner's murders – that is, he satisfied every element of a murder-for-hire that would result in his ex- wife's and new partner's actual homicide – and only escaped commission of a capital crime because the contract killer he hired was actually an undercover federal agent. Put simply, if ever there was a defendant deserving of a 108-month prison sentence, Chowdhury is it."

Chowdhury's attorney argued for a sentence of 7 years, three months, saying that Chowdhury initially sought to hire the undercover agents merely to beat up his wife and her boyfriend, and that it was the agents who kept pushing him towards murder.

"While the agents repeatedly tried to make the clear that the plan was for a murder, Mr. Chowdhury repeated his intention from earlier meetings - 'One thing, so I don't want to uh, actually kill him, cause I'm a Muslim honestly, [unintelligible] I want to just, you know, destroy him.' When the agents repeated that they are there only for a murder, his lengthy pauses in response speak volumes. Their frustration with his repeated attempts to procure a robbery/assault when they were only offering a murder became evident when the agent told him: 'We're not going to debate this shit anymore. Does that make sense?'

"The agent's voiced their frustration at the meeting on January 4, 2023. This was the third in-person meeting over a period of six weeks. Multiple phone calls had been made in between the meetings. The agents had been clear, but Mr. Chowdhury remained clearly torn about the option he was being offered. The agents, to try and keep Mr. Chowdhury engaged, dropped the price significantly, from $10,000 to $4,000. They offered him installment payments. They dropped the down payment to $500.

"Mohammed Chowdhury should have walked away. He did not, and after the January 4, 2023 meeting he consummated the deal. He has now accepted responsibility for doing so.

"Yet his extended hesitation to commit this crime, and the fact that he only did so after federal agents made it unrealistically possible, demonstrate that it is not necessary to sentence him to more than 87 months to teach him that his conduct was wrong or to deter him from committing any other crimes in the future. The particular circumstances under which this crime was committed show that Mr. Chowdhury was very close to not committing it. It is not hard to imagine how this investigation could have concluded without Mr. Chowdhury committing murder-for-hire. The agents would have been justified had they abandoned what had become a frustrating investigation by the third meeting on January 4, 2023. Mr. Chowdhury could have been, and should have been, stronger and listened to the voice inside him that was telling him not to go through with it. Mr. Chowdhury's reluctance shows that he will be able to immediately get back on the right side of the law when he is released after an 87-month sentence.

"The particular facts and circumstances of this case also demonstrate that Mohammed Chowdhury was never in a position to actually make this crime a reality. To the confidential source he was a mark. The source took his money, reported him to law enforcement, and didn't mention its profit. The agents had to show extreme patience to get Mr. Chowdhury to commit this crime. Given that the only people he spoke to about harming the victims were a confidential source who confidently took his money and federal agents, it is clear that he had no connections to anyone who would carry out any actual violence. He naively believed that a $500 deposit, with the balance to be paid slowly over time, would be sufficient to induce someone to commit serious harm on his behalf. It appears that Mohammed Chowdhury could only have committed murder-for-hire under these particular circumstances. Because he was not in a position to make the crime a reality, an 87-month sentence is sufficient."

Prosecutors, however, disagreed:

"Despite pleading guilty and admitting to all of the essential facts of his murder-for-hire plot, the defendant in this case has previously downplayed the gravity of his conduct, arguing that the undercover federal agent served as a 'but for' enabler without whom the defendant would never have gone through with the crime. The defendant's argument is belied by the stark reality of the situation: that this defendant attempted the very same conduct prior to the intervention of federal law enforcement with an individual, who mercifully took the money from the defendant and never carried out the requested assignment. Without the intervention of a source who contacted law enforcement about the defendant's murder plans and without the intervention of the FBI, the defendant may well have committed capital offenses and the victims in this case might both be dead. Indeed, the defendant did everything necessary to complete the murder-for-hire – that is, he precisely took every step and possessed the same intent of a defendant who orchestrates a successful murder-for-hire resulting in the actual homicide of the victims. Though the victims in this case were not, in fact, killed, the defendant's conduct was extraordinarily serious, horrifying, and deserving of a significant sentence – specifically, nine years – of incarceration.

"The facts in this case also speak to a darker and more sinister psyche of this defendant – one that is heard in the undercover recordings, one that speaks to the defendant's fragile masculinity, and his determination to exact violent retribution to his perceived wronging. In one recording, he describes his frustration at his ex-wife's westernization and independent thinking; however, it is his reference, more than once, to the fact that he brought her to the United States and paid money for her, that is so deeply troubling. This seeming commodification of a human – reducing her to acquired property; and the dehumanization of her as a person capable of exercising choice – and the unwillingness to imagine a life without him in it, all speaks volumes about the dangerous mentality of this defendant and his purposefulness in perpetrating this crime."