Fereidoun Khalilian, known as Prince Fred, has had charges of an alleged murder-for-hire plot dropped, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.
Khalilian, a former business partner of Paris Hilton, was arrested by the FBI in a Las Vegas Dunkin Donuts on June 22 after he allegedly offered his bodyguard $20,000 to kill documentary filmmaker J. Esco.
Judge Dale S. Fischer dismissed the charge Just before closing arguments in his trial were set to begin.
Fischer dropped the charges on ‘venue’ grounds as Khalilian was in France when he allegedly ordered the hit.
‘Whether another indictment will be returned against him in Los Angeles or elsewhere is to be determined,’ a spokesperson for the LA US Attorney’s Office said.
Khalilian, (right) a former business partner of Paris Hilton, (left) was arrested by the FBI in a Las Vegas Dunkin Donuts on June 22
A staged ‘proof of death’ photo that was used to dupe Khalilian by his bodyguard this March. After what he though was a successful assassination, the con man asked his bodyguard: ‘His body, nobody is going to be able to find him, huh?’
However, Khalilian will not be released from prison as he has been charged with witness tampering after allegedly bribing a witness that was due to testify against him in the trial.
Khalilian’s relationship with Esco, who had formerly been an employee, soured when he realized a documentary film he was making about Khalilian was actually an exposé which portrayed him as an unscrupulous conman who pretended to be a Middle Eastern royal to secure deals.
The businessman offered his bodyguard $20,000 to kill Esco, but instead of carrying out the hit job, the bodyguard – named only as Michael in the court dossiers – staged the killing with the filmmaker.
Photos submitted in an FBI agent’s affidavit show the would-be victim lying in a pool of blood.
In a phone call obtained by the FBI, Prince Fred had allegedly asked his bodyguard: ‘His body, nobody is going to be able to find him, huh?’
Khalilian was a fixture of the Miami club scene for decades and prosecutors said he shared photos of celebrities, luxury cars and watches on Instagram to ‘project a sense of wealth.’
According to court records the swindler has lived in Miami since 1989, and since then appeared on the radar of the Federal Trade Commission on a number of occasions for his involvement in various fraudulent schemes.
He was famously a business partner to Paris Hilton in her Club Paris venture, and made an effort to rub shoulders with celebrities including Drake, Mally Mall, Usher, Sylvester Stallone and Demi Lovato.
Fereidoun Khalilian, 51, aka Prince Fred, was arrested in June for his alleged involvement in a murder for hire scheme. He has routinely been photographed with celebrities and is pictured with singer Demi Lovato
According to the FBI, Khalilian uses social media to ‘project a sense of wealth’. He is pictured here with rapper Drake
Khalilian, who goes by the name ‘Prince Fred,’ describes himself as an entertainment agent and entrepreneur on his Instagram account, which has over 235,000 followers. He is pictured with Kevin Hart
In the early 2000s he was banned from all travel-related telemarketing, and ordered to pay $185,000 to consumers after making fraudulent pitches for travel packages.
According to an account submitted to the court by an FBI agent, Khalilian met the alleged target in 2009 in Miami while the latter was working in a computer repair store.
The agent suggested that at the time Khalilian ‘wore expensive jewelry and claimed to be a billionaire. He drove a Range Rover and claimed to also have a Lamborghini and Bugatti at his mansion’.
After being impressed by the quality of the target’s work as a technician, Khalilian invited him to work for his telemarketing company, which operated under the name My Car Solutions.
A complaint filed by the Federal Trade Comission in June 2010 alleged that My Car Solutions would sell motorists fake ‘extended’ warranty coverage for their cars by claiming to be calling from the manufacturer or the dealer.
The target told the FBI agent that he soon became aware of the fraudulent nature of My Car Solutions and sensed that it preyed on the elderly by selling them fake and unnecessary auto warranties.
The company was eventually raided, fined $4million and shut down.
Though Khalilian wanted the alleged target to continue working for him, he refused and in 2013 moved to Los Angeles from Miami to work in the film industry.
Khalilian paraded for decades as a wealthy prince from a Middle Eastern country. The target had worked for Khalilian in 2009 and after bumping into the con man in LA in 2019 decided to making a film exposing him
Rapper Mally Mall (right) associated with Khalilian (left) regularly and was handed a 33-month sentence in federal prison in 2021 for running an interstate prostitution ring
Six years later, in 2019, the pair randomly bumped into each other in Los Angeles, the court records indicate, and Khalilian introduced himself to his friends as a prince from Dubai.
After researching Khalilian, the alleged victim became intrigued by the elaborate personal narrative which the ‘Prince’ would offer to various friends and acquaintance.
He convinced Khalilian that he would make a documentary about him – but failed to mention that this was actually going to be an exposé which painted him as a conman.
The target then went on to interview, Khalilian’s former business associates, alleged victims and bodyguards.
The bodyguards said in those interviews that Khalilian would make them wear fake Secret Service pins and fake earpieces that were not connected to radios in order to create the illusion that he was an important diplomat.
Eventually the conman began to get a sense that this documentary was going to be harmful to his reputation and the alleged target began getting on his nerves.
In February 2022, according to the court documents, Khalilian began discussing the case with his bodyguard who he first hired the year before.
The bodyguard, named only as M.S. and Michael in the court filing, had worked previously for a well known rapper who in 2021 was sentenced to three years for human trafficking.
After believing the murder had been carried out, Khalilian asked Michael, or M.S., if the body was definitely going to remain hidden
Under the direction of FBI agents Michael told Khalilian he would need additional payments made to Zelle accounts that were being run by the agency. Pictured is a transcript of a tapped call between the two
Rapper Mally Mall associated with Khalilian regularly and was handed a 33-month sentence in federal prison in 2021 for running an interstate prostitution ring.
Shortly after February 2022, Michael stopped working for Khalilian and even recorded an interview for the documentary.
In March this year, the alleged target wrote to Michael asking for Khalilian’s girlfriend’s phone number. Michael in turn notified Khalilian about the request.
Khalilian then went on vacation to Europe with his girlfriend and during the trip the filmmaker allegedly called him nearly 20 times. According to the FBI agent’s account, the target would call and just say a single word, such as ‘Fred’, ‘Fareed’ or ‘Habibi’.
In one recorded call on March 8, Khalilian became furious and threatened to kill the filmmaker.
‘Listen to me you motherf***er. When I’m done with you I’m going to cut each one of your f***ing fingers off. I’m coming for you, motherf***er,’ he said, according to a transcript.
Three hours later at around 9pm, Khalilian wrote a message to Michael that read: ‘Michael Call me please’.
Over the next few days in a number of messages, Khalilian discussed with Michael the issued he was facing with his former employee.
In a video message sent to Michael, he supposedly said of the alleged target: ‘Look at this fucking psycho, look at what he is doing. He is blowing up my fucking phone bro, calling everybody’s name, numbers, just blowing me up all day’.
The next day, Khalilian allegedly received an ambiguous from Michael that suggested the supposed target was being tracked by somebody.
‘They are just waiting on him to leave,’ it read. ‘I may use a [celebrity chef] to bait him out.’
That day Khalilian told Michael to ask ‘them’ for ‘some type of proof that they are there’, to which Michael responded, ‘Yes’.
After a week passes the FBI agent’s statement indicates Khalilian continued to complain to Michael about the impact the alleged victim was having on his life. ‘Brother he is hurting all my shareholders tribes everything,’ he allegedly messaged.
On March 11, Michael sent Khalilian a screenshot of the website of the apartment block in which the alleged target lived. Then on March 16 the con man sent Michael a message reading simply: ‘I need this done’.
The bodyguard then assured that the job would be done and that he had hired a trio of Mexicans to carry out the killing. At around the same time he messaged the alleged target and told him that Khalilian was offering $20,000 for his life.
After that they ‘discussed staging a fake death scene to lead Khalilian into believing’ the assassination had been completed.