Lombard Man Arrested in Murder-for-Hire Plot

A suburban Lombard man was arrested today after being charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to arrange for the murder of a plaintiff in a civil suit who had been awarded $8.2 million by a DuPage County judge. The arrest was announced today by Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Gary Shapiro, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Daniel Dvorkin, age 74, of 1636 South Highland Avenue in Lombard, was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago earlier this week and unsealed today, with one count of solicitation to commit a crime of violence, namely, murder-for-hire, which is a felony offense. Dvorkin was arrested this morning at his office, without incident, by FBI special agents and officers from the Oakbrook Terrace Police Department (OTPD).

According to the complaint, Dvorkin is the owner of Dan Development Limited, with offices located at 1 Trans Am Plaza in Oakbrook Terrace. In April of this year, Dvorkin is alleged to have approached an individual, identified only as a “cooperating witness” (CW), at Dvorkin’s Oakbrook Terrace office. Dvorkin provided to this person a copy of a court order reflecting that Dvorkin and his company had been ordered to pay an $8.2 million civil judgment to another corporate entity. Dvorkin indicated that he wanted to avoid paying the judgment and stated that he wanted the intended victim to “stop breathing.” Dvorkin explained that he had $100,000 to pay for this murder and gave the CW additional documents that identified the intended victim, the co-owner of the corporate entity entitled to the judgment amount in the civil lawsuit.

After this meeting, the CW alerted the OTPD and the FBI of this plot and began assisting with the further investigation of this matter. This included the consensual recording of conversations with Dvorkin, which helped lead to the charges announced today.

Dvorkin appeared this afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge Young B. Kim in Chicago, at which time he was formally charged. Dvorkin was ordered held without bond, pending his next court appearance, which is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. tomorrow (Friday). Until then, he will be held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Chicago. If convicted of the charge filed against him, Dvorkin faces a possible sentence of up to five years’ incarceration.

The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.