Murder-for-hire plot featured on 'Cops' headed to trial

Dippolito, 33, became the key figure in a special edition of TV's "Cops," which worked with Boynton Beach police to show her allegedly conspiring to kill her newlywed husband.

Mohamed Shihadeh, who owns check cashing stores and delis, walked in with a salacious tip, saying his former lover had asked him for help finding a hit man to murder her husband.

Born Dalia Mohamed in New York, Dippolito obtained a Florida real estate license, but her new husband Michael Dippolito — a convicted con-man — said they met when he called for her services as a prostitute.

[...] the police informant said she wanted his money: about $250,000 in savings and their $225,000 townhouse, which the new husband had paid for in cash and put in her name just days before she allegedly planned to have him killed.

— The same house, now surrounded with yellow crime scene tape, where Dalia Dippolito falls sobbing onto the chest of a detective who says her husband has been murdered.

Whether it's the legendary Twinkie defense or Ms. Dippolito's original reality TV story, defense attorneys have a long history of attempting to establish reasonable doubt.

Freed from prison, he still owed $191,000 in restitution to the victims he defrauded in a foreign currency scheme, but was sending each just $10 or so a month, while sheltering his cash and buying liposuction for his love handles, a Porsche, an SUV, and, for his mother, a condo.

[...] with the property taped off to look like a crime scene, she shows up, and more tears flow.