Big E’s co-owner sentenced for birthday murder-for-hire plot targeting ex lover, beau
A federal judge on Monday sent a 71-year-old vape shop owner to prison for more than seven years for trying to hire a hit man to rough up his ex-lover and kill her new boyfriend last year.
Vernon Wayne Brock co-owned Big E’s Vapor Shops and other stores in Kansas and Oklahoma when he was caught trying to convince a business partner who belonged to an “outlaw motorcycle gang” to carry out the murder-for-hire plot for $5,000, or find someone who would. He wanted her attacked and her new beau killed on her birthday, April 5, court records say.
But instead of carrying out the hit, Brock’s business partner contacted the FBI. Brock was arrested outside of Alva, Oklahoma, as he was driving home from a meeting at a Harper, Kansas, cafe where he gave his business partner a company check as payment for the scheme. Undercover agents watched the transaction as it unfolded on April 3, 2019.
Brock was charged in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma the next day.
Brock pleaded guilty last November to using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of a murder-for-hire plot. In his plea, he admitted to using a cellphone and a truck that crossed state lines to execute his plan.
Court records show he will serve 87 months in federal prison at FCI El Reno, a medium-security federal correctional facility in Oklahoma with an adjacent minimum-security campus, if he is eligible.
U.S. District Judge David L. Russell also ordered Brock to pay $512.52 in restitution to one of the victims and a $30,000 fine, according to court records.
At the time of his April 2019 indictment, Brock identified himself on Facebook as the owner of Pure Country Medical Cannabis in Waynoka, Oklahoma, and as the majority owner of Big E’s, which has 13 locations in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Some locations are in Wichita. He bought into Big E’s as the company sought to expand its e-cigarette and vaping business in 2013, The Eagle previously reported.
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 4:57 PM.
