Second arrest made in 2022 murder-for-hire plot at Rostraver strip mall
The alleged middle man in the murder-for-hire plot at a Rostraver Township shopping center more than three years ago has been arrested in Philadelphia and charged with helping to facilitate the killing.
Westmoreland County detectives on Tuesday charged Tuan Minh Dang, 47, of Philadelphia, with first-degree murder – the second man arrested in the alleged plot – after investigators said he recruited a hitman to kill an acquaintance’s former business associate whose relationship had soured.
Boyke Budiarachman, 49, of Rostraver Township, was shot once in the head and killed Nov. 5, 2022, as he walked to his pickup truck in the Rostraver Square shopping mall parking lot after having dinner with former business partner Keven Van Lam.
Lam, who was living in North Strabane Township at the time, was arrested three days later and charged with first-degree murder and evidence tampering after investigators said he solicited others to carry out Budiarachman’s killing. According to testimony at Lam’s preliminary hearing in October 2023, he had paid Budiarachman nearly $800,000 in late 2019 to purchase a temporary staffing business along with three houses in the Mon Valley and eight transport vans to help migrant workers find jobs in the Charleroi area.
The situation soured when Lam complained that Budiarachman had started a competing employment agency and taken some of his workers. Budiarachman also continued charging Lam about $8,000 every two weeks in order to keep some of his temporary workers employed at the Fourth Street Foods butchering plant, where Budiarachman was head of hiring.
Lam told investigators that he contacted a “Mr. Tuan” to facilitate the hit on Budiarachman, although he claimed in a police interview that he only hoped the victim would be beaten on the leg with a baseball bat.
A month before the killing, Lam “consulted” with Tuan Dang, who was a “Vietnamese individual known to him to engage in criminal activity,” and they agreed on a $65,000 price to “take care of the victim,” according to the charging documents against Dang. Dang allegedly hired an unidentified Black man as the gunman and communicated with him before the killing, court documents allege. The shooter has not been arrested and it’s not clear whether authorities know his identity.
After the killing, Lam drove back to his other residence in Philadelphia – allegedly disposing of his cellular telephone on the Pennsylvania Turnpike – and left a duffle bag filled with $65,000 outside his home there, which Dang later retrieved, according to court documents. During the police interview, Lam identified “Tuan” as the man who helped facilitate the killing.
Authorities used that information and found that a man named Tuan Dang was on the state Department of Corrections’ visitors list for his brother, 54-year-old Tam Le, who is a state prison inmate on death row for a double murder in Philadelphia in 2014. Detectives asked Lam to review a photo lineup, and he “immediately” identified Dang as the man he hired to coordinate Budiarachman’s killing, according to court documents.
FBI agents interviewed Dang in Philadelphia on Tuesday and they showed him a photo of Lam, which he recognized and admitted to knowing him because Lam once operated a restaurant in that city. Dang also admitted that Lam approached him and asked him to do “work,” which he understood was meant to do harm to Budiarachman, according to court documents. Dang allegedly told investigators that he hired the unidentified man to shoot and kill Budiarachman, and that he gave the shooter a portion of the $65,000 bounty while keeping some of it for himself, investigators said.
Charges of first-degree murder and two counts of homicide against Dang were filed Tuesday at District Judge Wayne Vlasic’s office in Monessen. It’s not known when he will be transported from Philadelphia to Westmoreland County to face his preliminary arraignment.
Lam, 58, has been held without bond at the Westmoreland County jail since his arrest three days after the killing. His trial has been delayed numerous times and is tentatively scheduled for May 4.