North Carolina businessman offered to pay $30,000 for a double murder, ATF says
Text messages detailing a murder-for-hire plot helped incriminate a North Carolina man of trying to eliminate his former business partner in Philadelphia, according to the U.S. District Attorneys’ Office/Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
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The “insidious” plot included an additional payment to eliminate the ex partner’s “paramour,” prosecutors say.
Xin Guang Guo, 48, of Plymouth, North Carolina, was sentenced to 15 years and six months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of a murder-for-hire, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said in an Aug. 24 news release.
The plot came to light in September 2025, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives learned that a Guo “wanted to contract a hitman,” officials said.
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“Investigators received copies of text messages written by the defendant … detailing his plan. In subsequent phone calls monitored by the ATF, Guo discussed the terms of the contract, in which he would pay $15,000 for each murder,” prosecutors said.
“Guo also arranged to meet an individual he thought was the hitman in Philadelphia on October 6, so Guo could give him $2,500 to buy a gun. … The defendant gave the $2,500 to an ATF undercover officer and requested photographic proof that (the victims) had been murdered before he would pay the remaining balance.”
Guo was arrested shortly after driving away from the meeting, officials said.
The identities of the intended victims were not released.
“The defendant orchestrated the death of two people,” Metcalf said in the release. “It does not matter whether you pull the trigger or pay someone else to do it. It also does not matter that, in this case, the plan failed. Anyone who takes action to take the life of another faces a lengthy stay in federal prison.”
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Plymouth is about a 120-mile drive northeast from downtown Raleigh.
