An English court has sentenced a West Allis woman to 30 years in prison for her role in a bungled plot to kill a man with whom her online boyfriend had an ongoing beef.
The hearing that unfolded in a Birmingham, England, courtroom on Aug. 21 brought an end to a wild legal odyssey for Aimee Betro, who British prosecutors say spent five years dodging police on two continents after twice failing to kill her intended target.
Court records show Betro, 45, met Mohammed Nazir on a dating app and that things evolved into a relationship; Betro visited Nazir in the UK three times during a nine-month period between December 2018 and August 2019.
Nazir and his father, Mohammed Aslam, had been involved in a heated feud with the owner of a boutique in Birmingham.
Prosecutors believe Betro may have been recruited during her August 2019 visit to carry out a plan to kill the victim or a member of his family.
“You were engaged in a complex, well-planned conspiracy to murder,” Judge Simon Drew said in sentencing remarks that were made public on Aug. 21. “You were prepared to pull the trigger and did so on two separate occasions.”
Here’s how British prosecutors say things evolved that night
In court documents, prosecutors say Betro wore a niqab to concealed her identity when she went to the victim’s home on Sept. 7, 2019. She tried to fire shots at the man, but her gun jammed and the man managed to get away unharmed.
She returned a few hours later, on Sept. 8, 2019, and fired three bullets through bedroom windows of the family home. No one was injured in the attack.
Investigators recovered messages between Nazir and Betro about shipments of firearms and firearm parts, and that Betro used ‘burner’ phones to plan the attack, court records show.
Aslam, 56, and Nazir, 31, were arrested last year. In November, Nazir was sentenced to 32 years for various offenses, including conspiracy to murder. Aslam was sentenced to 10 years.
Betro managed to slip out of the UK, and became the subject of a manhunt by several international law enforcement agencies.
She was apprehended in Armenia in July 2024, five years after the shooting, and was returned to the UK in January.
Betro was found guilty Aug. 12 of conspiracy to murder, possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and an offense relating to the importation of ammunition into the UK.
What else do we know about Aimee Betro?
British authorities believe she flew to Manchester on Aug. 22, 2019, roughly two weeks before the shooting. Court records show Betro flew back to the United States on Sept. 9, 2019, a day after the shooting.
Three months after her return, she was charged with one count of identity theft and two counts of attempted identity theft in 2019 in Grant County, in southwest Wisconsin, on the Iowa and Illinois border.
Online court records show she failed to show for a Jan. 6, 2020, court hearing and an arrest warrant was issued.
A criminal complaint in that case says the woman spoke with a detective in the case Sept. 12, 2019.
The complaint alleges the woman allegedly used someone’s banking information to make credit card payments. A victim said three attempted transactions were made, with only the first, for $422 to Discover Financial Services, successful.
The victim told the detective an employee of a credit card company told him who made the fraudulent transaction. The victim googled the name and found she worked for the Brewers. He had recently bought tickets for a Brewers game.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was able to confirm last year that Betro worked as a part-time seasonal worker in the Brewers’ ticket office about five years ago.
Chris Ramirez covers courts for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He can be reached at caramirez@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: West Allis woman gets 30 years in failed international murder-for-hire plot
Reporting by Chris Ramirez, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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