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Feds: Woman used stolen credit cards to pay for hit man

A New Jersey woman who allegedly tried to hire a hit man and pay for his services using stolen credit cards was arrested Tuesday on multiple conspiracy and identity-theft charges.

A New Jersey woman who allegedly tried to hire a hit man and pay for his services using stolen credit cards was arrested Tuesday on multiple conspiracy and identity-theft charges.

Marissa Mark, 28, was living in Allentown in 2006 when she contacted a website called hitmanforhire.com to kill her ex-boyfriend's new flame. After haggling over the contract, she agreed to pay $37,000 to have an assassin gun down a woman identified only as "A.L.R.," according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday in Allentown. Mark was arrested Tuesday in Jersey City.

The hit man agreed to travel to Southern California, where A.L.R. lived, to shoot the woman in the head, according to the indictment.

On Sept. 12, 2006, Mark allegedly used three stolen credit cards to make a $19,000 down payment to the hit man. She used the Internet payment service, PayPal, to make the payment, according to the indictment.

The plan quickly fizzled.

PayPal discovered the payments were unauthorized. The company stopped the money from being credited to the hit man's account, according to the indictment.

The Las Vegas-based hit man, whose full time job was dealing poker at the Bellagio, flew to California anyway.

He allegedly visited A.L.R. and told her he had been hired to kill her. According to an account in the Las Vegas Sun, the accused hit man, Essam Ahmed Eid, handed her a note that said: "Somebody wants your head. Somebody wants you killed and they hate you a lot."

He told A.L.R. - whom the Sun identified as loan broker Ann Royston - that her boyfriend's ex had put down a sizable sum to kill her and showed her e-mails to support his claim. But because Royston reminded him of his own daughter, he could not commit the crime. Instead, he offered to turn the tables, and kill Mark if Royston would pony up the balance on the contract, according to the Sun.

Royston declined Eid's offer and called police. He was later captured in Ireland after another botched attempt to contract for a killing.