LOS ANGELES – A Santa Barbara County man who solicited a “hitman” to murder a Bel-Air man, his wife and a business associate was sentenced today to 72 months in federal prison for orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot that stemmed from a decade-old business dispute.
Eugene Darryl Temkin, 51, of Goleta, California, received the six-year sentence from United States District Judge Stephen V. Wilson.
Following a bench trial in August, Judge Wilson found Temkin guilty of soliciting a crime of violence, attempting to interfere with interstate commerce by threats and violence, and using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of a murder-for-hire.
“The evidence showed that defendant engaged in criminal conduct of the worst sort: With meticulous planning and full contemplation, defendant agreed to pay a hitman, ‘Pavel’ [who was actually an undercover law enforcement officer], to brutally kill in cold blood three people, two of whom he barely knew,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing brief. “What is more, these killings were only to take place after ‘Pavel’ first tortured the victims in order to force them to pay $15 million into defendant’s off-shore bank account.”
