Murder-For-Hire Plot Launched From New York Jail Cell

Basel Ramadan

OCEAN CITY — More details have emerged in the indictment released on Thursday charging an Ocean City man in a murder-for-hire plot launched from a jail cell in New York, including information the alleged murder plan targeted “several” witnesses.

In mid-May, federal officials concluded an investigation into a multi-million dollar cigarette smuggling operation with raids on two locations in and around the resort area including the West Ocean City homes of local residents and business owners Basel Ramadan, 42, who has been called the “ringleader” of the operation, and Samer Ramadan, 40, who is being called the operation’s “enterprise treasurer.” Also indicted were 14 other alleged co-conspirators, from transporters to distributors to resellers, who were rounded up at locations all over the mid-Atlantic region on the same day in May.

On Thursday, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and NYPD Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced the indictment of Basel Ramadan and Yousseff Odeh, one of his alleged distributors and a trusted lieutenant, on new charges they conspired from behind bars to murder witnesses they believed were cooperating with law enforcement in the massive cigarette smuggling case against them.

The latest indictment unsealed and released by the New York Attorney General’s Office late Thursday reveals the alleged murder-for-hire conspiracy carried out by Basel Ramadan and Odeh began shortly after their arraignment and subsequent incarceration at Rikers Island in New York. The indictment alleges Ramadan and Odeh conspired with one or more persons and with each other to engage in the felony of murder in the second degree from May 24 to last Friday, October 11.

READ .....MORE