How prosecutors say it worked
Step by step, from the first meetings to the night of July 7, 2021.
Step 1: The South Florida hub
From February to July 2021, South Florida was, in the DOJ's words, “a central location for planning and financing the plot to oust President Moïse.” CTU Security (Intriago & Pretel Ortiz) would supply the force; Worldwide Capital Lending (Veintemilla) would supply the money — a $175,000 credit line plus ammunition funds.
Step 2: Contracts for a new regime
The April 2021 deal: install Sanon, and CTU would receive lucrative contracts for infrastructure projects, security forces and military-type equipment under his government. Money and ambition — not ideology alone — are the prosecution's stated motive.
Step 3: An army hired as “security”
CTU retained roughly 20–22 former Colombian soldiers, nominally as Sanon's security detail. Bergmann helped fund their lodging in Haiti and shipped 20 ballistic vests falsely labelled as medical X-ray vests. The numbers vary across the record — 20 recruited, 22 in the contingent, 26 in the hit squad — because they count different groups.
Step 4: Sanon is dropped
By June 2021 the group judged Sanon unqualified and unpopular, and switched its contract to ex-judge Wendelle Coq Thélot. On this point the prosecution's chronology and Sanon's 2026 defence agree: he was sidelined. What he knew after that is the trial's central fight.
Step 5: Arrest → kidnap → kill
The mission kept changing shape: serve an “arrest warrant” → kidnap Moïse at his sister's house, drug him, force his resignation → seize him at the airport on June 19 and exile him by plane (aborted) → kill him. On July 6 the team was told the mission was to kill; Rivera García admitted relaying that order.
Step 6: The PPP money trail
Harricharan and Israel pleaded guilty to laundering about $840,827 in fraudulent PPP funds; roughly $175,000 reached Veintemilla in May 2021 and a further $80,000 in June. A separate September 2026 indictment charges Rainer, Simmons, Williamson and Nave in a wider PPP-EIDL scheme of about $343,000 in loan-linked funds. RNDDH cautions that the traced $340,000 does not by itself establish the plot's full financing — or its ultimate masterminds.
Step 7: The night itself
Attackers in CTU vests shouted that they were DEA agents. A Delta Team entered the residence and shot Moïse 12 times; Martine Moïse survived by playing dead. Palace security offered no resistance — the question that still hangs over Dimitri Hérard, who is not charged in the U.S. case and escaped Haitian custody in 2024.