A Florida prison inmate pleaded guilty to engineering a murder-for-hire plot that would have used federal stimulus money to pay for killing a judge and his family, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida.
Curtis Brown, 35, was charged with “threatening to murder a federal judge in retaliation for performing his official duties and mailing a letter to a federal judge threatening to kill the judge and his family,” the Department of Justice said in a news release Wednesday.
The identity of the judge was not released.
“Brown was in the Florida State Prison in Raiford ... when he sent a letter dated November 30, 2021, to a federal judge’s chambers,” the DOJ reported.
“The letter stated that the judge’s ‘recent refusal to grant warranted relief’ gave Brown no other choice but to use his federal stimulus money to pay for someone to kill the judge. Brown stated that if he could not get to the judge in time, he would settle for a member of the judge’s family.”
Brown signed the handwritten letter, and ended it with a threat that if the judge contacted authorities “it would get worse,” officials said.
The judge made the call anyway, and the threat was investigated by the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, officials said.
Brown has been in prison since 2006 for dealing in cocaine and had a predicted release date of November 2034, records show.
He has not been sentenced on the two new charges, but each carries a maximum of 10 years in federal prison, officials said.
Raiford is about 45 miles southwest of Jacksonville.
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