A 25-year-old American, Tyrese Haspil has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison for the murder of his former boss, Fahim Saleh, in New York City.
Saleh, 33, was the founder and CEO of the Nigerian transportation company, Gokada.
Haspil, while listening to his lawyer’s arguement in court on Tuesday for nearly an hour about the 50-year-life sentence prosecutors wanted for him being too harsh, was then asked to speak.
“Unlike my counsel, I don’t think anything less than life without parole would be appropriate,” he told Judge April Newbauer, stunning the courtroom.
The shocking announcement marked an end to the gruesome case and often strange court proceedings.
Haspil, 25, was charged with second-degree murder in the slaying on July 13, 2020, inside Saleh’s $2.2 million East Houston Street apartment, according to police.
“To you, Fahim was just a dollar sign, a ticket to a life you didn’t work for,” Saleh’s sister, Rif Saleh, said in a moving victim impact statement in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“What impact have you made on the world?” she said. “You’re a con man and a murderer. I have no sympathy for you. You deserve to spend your whole life in prison.”
Saleh’s father, Ahmed Saleh, called the killer’s murder defence “sickening.”
“What you paid back to me and my family and to my son is a dead body ripped up to pieces,” he said. “He should spend the rest of his years in prison where he belongs.”
Cops said Haspil worked as Saleh’s “executive assistant” and handled the international entrepreneur’s “finances and personal matters” and owed his boss “a significant amount of money.”
The debt stemmed from Haspil’s alleged embezzlement of $400,000 from Saleh, who in 2018 founded Gokada, a Nigerian motorcycle ride-sharing company that recently transitioned into a delivery service.
Saleh, described by one pal as “the Elon Musk of the developing world,” even gave Haspil the title of chief of staff at his Adventure Capital investment firm, only to have his protégé rip him off.
Still, Saleh cut Haspil a break when he found out about the betrayal and the stolen funds, deciding to work out a repayment plan rather than turn the thief over to the cops, a decision that cost him his life.
Investigators said Haspil used a Taser to incapacitate Saleh inside the building’s elevator.
In chilling testimony, he later claimed that he then “took out a knife and started aiming for his neck.”
The killer said he used an electrical saw he bought at a local Home Depot with his victim’s credit card to chop up the body and stuffed the remains in plastic bags.
Surveillance video allegedly shows him going in and out of the store.
At a June court hearing, Haspil testified that he started working for Faleh in 2018 after padding his resume with phony work experience after being canned from a Long Island restaurant for embezzling $20,000.
He testified that he needed the cash to keep his high-maintenance French girlfriend, Marine Chaveuz, immersed in the lavish lifestyle that she was accustomed to.
Haspil was convicted of first- and second-degree murder, grand larceny and burglary in June.
The killer’s Legal Aid lawyer, Jim Roberts, argued that his client didn’t deserve the hefty prison sentence that Manhattan prosecutors had requested.
“This is de facto life without parole,” Roberts said, defending Haspil while citing medical literature that proves that Haspil was an ‘emerging adult’ at the time of the crimes.
He said the convicted killer was just 19 when he started embezzling funds.
Prosecutors sought a sentence of 50-years to life and a judgement order of $399,614 for the money that Haspil stole.
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