The San Diego Trio Who Tried And Failed To Have Their Business Associate Killed
In November 2018, FBI agents knocked on the door of Ninus Malan to inform him that his longtime business partner, Salam Razuki, was conspiring with two other associates to have him kidnapped, taken to Mexico, and murdered. Malan had been entangled in a $40 million legal dispute with Razuki, but he had no way of knowing how sinister the dispute had become.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, investigators believed the plot began just one month earlier, in October 2018, when Razuki and fellow conspirator Sylvia Gonzales met with an FBI informant posing as a hitman.
The informant struck a deal with Razuki and Gonzales to go through with the murder-for-hire plot against Malan for $2,000. The informant also secured the first $1,000 payment, which was submitted as evidence against the conspirators.
A third conspirator, Elizabeth Juarez, was allegedly pulled into the plot by Gonzales, her employer. She was linked to the case due to a photo of the two of them at a La Mesa sushi restaurant. The photo was taken after they met with the informant, during which they allegedly discussed the murder-for-hire plot. Prosecutors alleged the women wanted to commemorate the occasion with a picture.
Gonzales supplied the informant with photographs of Malan and asked him to meet her and Razuki at San Diego Superior Court a few days later to see Malan in person. The informant declined to go inside, but Gonzales met him outside and gave him two business addresses for Malan.
Of course, instead of killing Malan, the informant alerted the FBI, who convinced Malan to stage photos to make it look as though the job had been completed. The staged photos depict a bloodied Malan, looking like he had been tortured and shot in the head. In court in February 2023, Malan said the memory of the photos still haunted him more than four years after they were taken.