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A Wisconsin woman has been found guilty of involvement in an assassination attempt after law enforcement reports she traveled to England, adopted a disguise, and attempted a point-blank shooting, driven by a “long-distance lover” she encountered online.
Aimee Betro, 44, was convicted on Tuesday for charges like conspiracy to murder and firearm possession with intent at Birmingham Crown Court. This followed her attempt at a peculiar “revenge plot” aimed at the family of a Birmingham clothing store owner who had an ongoing conflict with her romantic interest and his family, as stated by the Crown Prosecution Service in the West Midlands.
“Only Betro understands her true motives or what benefits she expected from engaging in a crime that involved traveling from Wisconsin to Birmingham to attack an unfamiliar man,” said Specialist Prosecutor Hannah Sidaway of the Crown Protection Service in the West Midlands following the verdict. “The jury evidently agreed it was a botched, planned hit.”
What did Aimee Betro do?
Betro turned into an international “hitwoman” after establishing a relationship with Mohammed Nazir online, prosecutors explain. Eventually, Nazir and his father, Mohammed Aslam, enlisted her for a “planned assassination” against a clothing shop owner in Birmingham.
The assassination attempt roots back to a 2018 “dispute” among Aslam, Nazir, and the store owner inside the business, leading to property damage and injuries among the men involved, according to a statement from the West Midlands Police.
Betro agreed to fly from her home in Wisconsin to England on August 22, 2019 to carry out the plot.
Prosecutors recounted that about two weeks later, on September 7, 2019, Betro drove to the shop owner’s South Yardley residence in a black Mercedes she bought that day, disguised in a niqab covering her body and face, and attempted to shoot the shop owner’s son at “point-blank range” as he returned home around 8:10 p.m.
The plot was foiled, however, when her gun “jammed or malfunctioned” and her intended target managed to get back into his car and drive away, clipping the open door of Betro’s Mercedes as he fled.
“It is sheer luck that he managed to get away unscathed,” Sidaway said.
Aimee Betro makes second shooting attempt at shop owner’s home
After changing her clothes, Betro returned to the home several hours later in a cab — which she’d arranged using the fake name “Becky Booth.”
“The taxi dropped her near the family home, where CCTV captured her distinctive trousers and toe-capped shoes as she approached the property,” prosecutors said in their statement. “She fired three shots through the windows — two bullets penetrating the bay window and one going through the bedroom window, causing extensive damage to the family home.”
Then, Betro sent a taunting text message to the shop owner from an unregistered phone that she later discarded, police said.
The text read: “Stop playing hide n seek. You’re lucky it jammed. Who is it? Your family or you? Pick one.”
Aimee Betro, Mohammed Nazir seek revenge on another man
Betro then fled England, flying back to the United States on Sept. 9, 2019, authorities said. Nazir soon joined her and the pair attempted to target another one of Nazir’s rivals.
While in the U.S., Betro sent three packages containing illegal ammunition and firearm components, using a false name, to a man in Derbyshire, a county in the East Midlands of England.
Nazir tipped police off about the package and the man was briefly arrested before the revenge plot unraveled, prosecutors said.
Betro was convicted of being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on the importation of ammunition in connection with that plot.
Building the case against Aimee Betro
Authorities were able to identify Betro as a suspect in the failed hit after poring through surveilance footage, which captured her buying burner phones in Birmingham, repeatedly scoping out the victim’s house before the attack, approaching the victim with a gun “clearly visible in her hand” and fleeing in the damaged Mercedes, authorities said.
They also used mobile phone data, witness testimony and digital forensics to build the case against her.
“This is a unique case which has involved a huge amount of work tracing the movements of Betro from her arrival into the UK, her subsequent failed attempt to shoot a man dead, and her departure from the UK,” Detective Chief Inspector Alastair Orencas, of the West Midlands Police Major Crime Unit, said in a statement. “It’s by luck that her attempt to kill her target failed, thanks to the jamming of her gun.”
An international manhunt was soon launched to track her down, but Betro fled to Armenia and remained on the run for years. She was arrested in Armenia in July of 2024 and extradited back to the UK to face the charges against her.
She’s scheduled to be sentenced for the crimes on Aug. 21, 2025.
Nazir was convicted last year for the charges against him, including conspiracy to murder, and was sentenced to 32 years behind bars, prosecutors said. His father, Aslam, was sentenced to 10 years for his role in the failed revenge plot.
