A Florida man who was being held in a federal prison on charges of cyber harassment was found guilty of attempting to have witnesses in his case murdered, including members of his family. He also went after the federal prosecutor who signed his indictment and the FBI special agent who handled the case.
Anthony Frederick Brillante II, 36, was first charged with cyber harassment while a student at Florida International University.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, Brillante made “tens of thousands of phone calls and text messages” to his cousin and her family in New York, including her 12-year-old daughter.
The messages, sent from “hundreds” of spoofed phone numbers, were explicitly violent threats to their lives. They received them over a 15-month period from 2021 to 2022.
He was eventually found guilty of those charges, but before his trial, the same U.S. Attorney’s Office claimed that he attempted to murder those family members, as well as others involved in the case.
According to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida, Brillante was found guilty of attempted murder of a United States employee, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice.
Law&Crime reviewed Brillante’s indictment, which detailed the actions he took while in custody at the Miami Federal Detention Center in the fall of 2023; his cyber harassment trial was set to begin in October.
30, 2023. Brillante spoke with an unnamed individual after learning that his cousin, her husband, and their daughter would be called as witnesses. He asked the person to transfer $30,000 from their bank account to the account of a cooperating witness.
The cooperating witness was a “associate” of the person who shared a prison cell with Brillante. According to the indictment, Brillante told the individual that the money was intended to pay someone to kill those three relatives as well as two others, a cousin and her husband who lived in Texas.
On October 29, 2023, an undercover FBI agent posed as a possible hitman and another associate of Brillante’s cellmate. During their recorded conversation, Brillante stated that he wanted his five relatives, the federal prosecutor, and an FBI special agent killed. He informed the undercover agent that he had already paid $30,000 for the hit.
When the undercover agent informed Brillante that killing the two feds would cost an additional $10,000, Brillante agreed to pay the money. Brillante ordered the first individual to make two $20,000 transfers to the cooperating witness over the next two days.
Brillante was convicted by a federal jury on July 11. He is scheduled to be sentenced for the latter charges on October 1.
