BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The former manager of Clifton’s Tick Tock Diner has said he didn’t believe he was getting enough money from the restaurant co-owned by his uncle.

So Georgios Spyropoulos went to extreme lengths to get money from Alexandros Sgourdos, and now will be paying a severe price for it.

NJ.com reported that Spyropoulos received an 8-year jail sentence on Friday for conspiring to hire a hit man to kill his uncle. A letter from Sgourdos read, “He has still managed to manipulate his family into believing he is a victim and we are to blame.”

Spyropoulos pleaded guilty to planning Sgourdos’ murder in July.

According to an Associated Press report on nj1015.com, court records said the state began investigating Spyropoulos early in 2013 when he reached out to someone who was a state police drug informant looking for a hit man to kill Sgourdos.

Spyropoulos wanted Sgourdos threatened so he would give the combination to a safe before he was killed. One of the men would disguise as an exterminator and remove the safe’s money.

The proposed hit was going to cost Spyropoulos $20,000. According to the AP report, the detective posing as a hit man said Spyropoulos gave him a chrome-plated revolver at one of their meetings, along with a photo, saying, “That’s the piece of (bleep).”

Spyropoulos had been under house arrest in his Clifton home and had to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet since May 2013, according to NorthJersey.com. His attorney Anthony Pope said that Spyropoulos had undergone surgery in May, and would be under undue hardship in prison.

Division of Criminal Justice Director Elie Honig said, according to Politicker NJ, “Spyropoulos went to great lengths to ensure his uncle would be murdered, providing the hit man with a gun, a down payment, photos of his uncle and even a Google map to the uncle’s house. “This was an outstanding undercover investigation, which saved a life in all likelihood and secured a long term behind bars for this murderous nephew.”