Former Credit Union Branch Manager Sentenced for Murder-for-Hire Plot

A former credit union branch manager will spend the next nine and half years in a federal prison for initiating a murder-for-hire plot.

U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel sentenced Reshma Massarone during a court hearing in White Plains, N.Y. last week for hiring a hitman — who turned out to be a law enforcement officer — to murder her brother-in-law.  Judge Seibel also ordered the 40-year-old Massarone to three years of supervised release following the completion of her prison term and to pay a $100 fine.

Massarone was a former manager of the Woodstock, N.Y., branch of the $1.4 billion Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union. She pleaded guilty in March to a racketeering murder charge.

Massarone began working at Mid-Hudson Valley FCU in April 2023. Three months later, she contacted “Individual-1,” a law enforcement officer in Guyana, using Facebook messenger and solicited his services to murder her brother-in-law in exchange for $10,000.

She agreed to wire Individual-1 in Guyana $2,500 as a down payment. This law enforcement officer also provided security services for the brother-in-law whenever he traveled to Guyana. Although Massarone knew that Individual-1 provided security for her brother-in-law, court documents do not indicate whether she also knew Individual-1 was a law enforcement officer in that country.

The criminal complaint showed video surveillance photos of Massarone wiring the funds from a Walgreen’s Western Union kiosk in Orange County, N.Y., on July 21.

“As time passed, the defendant grew impatient with Individual-1, because she had already wired $2,500 to him and she wanted the victim dead,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo to Judge Seibel. “The defendant sent Individual-1 numerous WhatsApp messages urging him to murder the victim, even going so far as suggesting that “rat poison can do a great job.”

Before landing the branch manager’s job at Mid-Hudson Valley FCU, Massarone was working as a branch manager at Rhinebeck Bank in Warwick, N.Y. She alleged her brother-in-law frequently contacted the bank’s human resources department via emails and demanded that they terminate her employment. Because of these continuous emails, the bank’s HR department asked her to resign from her post.

Court documents showed that Massarone was born and raised in Guyana where she first met her brother-in-law, who was then a 34-year-old man, who married her older sister at 16.  According to the Guyana Legal Aid Clinic, 16-year-olds are allowed to marry but only with a parents’ or legal guardians’ consent.

However, according to court documents, this man initially wanted to marry Massarone — not her sister —- even though she was only 15 at the time. After Massarone and her mother refused to allow this to happen, the brother-in-law allegedly became obsessed with Massarone and “spared no effort in attempting to interfere with her life,” according to court documents.

For 25 years, the brother-in-law allegedly harassed Massarone by systematically calling her employers to get her fired from her jobs she held at several financial institutions, bad-mouthing her among family and friends, and taking other steps to intrude into her personal life, court documents showed. Despite obtaining court-ordered restraining orders against her brother-in-law, she did not receive any relief from this alleged long-term harassment.

“These are the facts of what led to this crime” Massarone’s attorney wrote in a sentencing memo to Judge Seibel. “Nobody, including the defendant, is offering excuses for her actions. The above chronology of irrefutable facts placed Ms. Massarone in a state of mind which drove her to do things she never dreamt of doing. Such was a state of rage that she acted completely out of character.”

But prosecutors countered that Massarone showed no remorse and noted that she told Individual 1 that she had “other jobs” for him.