CHESTERFIELD, Va. - A Pakistani national has been sentenced to 60 years in prison in a murder-for-hire plot in which a Virginia businessman was strangled with his own shoelaces.
News outlets report that 61-year-old Chaudhary Arshad Mahmood was sentenced Wednesday in Chesterfield County.
He was convicted of first-degree murder and solicitation to commit murder in February for the 2015 killing of Chesterfield County car dealer Adel M. Elmadany, aged 60.
Prosecutors allege Mahmood paid two men from Guatemala a total of $6,000 to carry out the plot because he believed Elmadany had helped shelter his wife while the couple was divorcing.
Mahmood maintained the co-defendants acted on their own.