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ID Thief Tries To Get Witnesses Whacked
adeelarshad82 writes "Pavel Valkovich of Sherman Oaks, CA has pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder, admitting that he attempted to hire hit-men to kill witnesses working with Federal authorities in their investigation of Valkovich's ID theft activities and subsequent crimes. According to the Justice Department: '...Valkovich and others had stolen personal identifying information and used that information to transfer funds from victims' bank accounts to PayPal accounts.'"
Yep. Murder is normally a "25 to life" affair. However, in this case it would be first degree murder, since it was most certainly premeditated. That is life with no chance of parole in every US jurisdiction I'm aware of, and makes you eligible for the death penalty in some.
Murder gets you extremely heavy time. Attempted murder doesn't get you as much. Solicitation of murder, even less. Reason is in each case, things are less severe. In the first, you actually took someone's life. In the second, you tried, but failed, so despite everything else, the person is still alive at least which makes the situation much less severe. In the third, you didn't even try to kill them, you just asked someone else to, someone who didn't do it.
However let's not pretend like 20 years is a light sentence.