After losing his partner, Clifford Lambert yearned for love once more, but tragically, this search would ultimately lead to the end of his life.

In December 2008, Lambert, a wealthy art dealer, vanished under mysterious circumstances, leaving his friends desperate for answers.

This puzzling case, highlighted in Oxygen’s A Plan to Kill, took a surprising twist when a man claimed Lambert had transferred ownership of his house to him just before disappearing.

This audacious assertion prompted investigators to unravel a chilling plot that had been carefully crafted over several months. It was the work of a cunning group of criminals determined to rob Lambert of not only his life but all that he cherished.

“Cliff Lambert lives a very expensive lifestyle,” Hightower explained. “When you would walk into his house, people described it like walking into Versailles.”

For years, Lambert shared that life with his boyfriend Travis, who tragically drowned in 2007.

“Cliff was just beside himself,” friend Steven Kilcullen recalled. “He was just devastated, and I don’t think he ever really got over it.”

Investigators Find Link to Con Man Kaushal Niroula

Then, three weeks later, Palm Springs Police Detective Frank Browning received a call from a real estate agent in San Francisco who had a client claiming to have a power of attorney gifting him Lambert’s home. 

“This was essentially the big break,” Browning said, “that led me to believe that there was something more nefarious going on.”

Investigators learned that the power of attorney and deed had been placed under the name Kaushal Niroula, a convicted con man with no known connection to Lambert.

“He would tell people that he was the Prince of Nepal and that he was exiled,” Hightower said. “Kaushal Niroula had undertaken a con scheme where he conned someone out of over $400,000 worth of artwork, he then ended up stealing $300,000 approximately worth of jewelry in order to pay the restitution for his art theft scheme.” 

Suspects in Clifford Lambert’s Disappearance Have Disturbing Ties to Fraud

Detectives asked the real estate agent to halt the sale of Lambert’s home as they dug deeper into Niroula’s past. They also learned that Lambert’s bank accounts had been used to make extravagant purchases in San Francisco, including clothes and electronics. 

Using an image captured on an ATM during one of the transactions, San Francisco Police identified the man behind the withdrawals as Daniel “Danny” Garcia—a known accomplice of Niroula’s who had also briefly dated Lambert. 

According to Browning, the two had parted “on bad terms” a few months before Lambert disappeared. 

“Daniel ended up making it clear that he was looking for an investor for a new business he wanted to open, meaning that he wanted his money,” Kilcullen explained. “Cliff told him, that’s it, this is done and he would have to leave.”

On January 7, 2009, the case took another shocking turn when Browning learned that men were at Lambert’s property and loading a U-Haul full of his belongings. Patrol units were quickly dispatched to stop the vehicles, leading to the arrest of Miguel Bustamante, a man who initially claimed he’d been hired as a mover.

“It didn’t look like movers,” Detective Simon Min remarked. “It looked like Miguel Bustamante at Cliff’s home trying to steal all the contents of the residence.”

Within an hour of Bustamante’s arrest for burglary, he requested to talk to detectives and told them he knew Garcia and Niroula and admitted to having Lambert’s car at his apartment complex.

Although traces of blood were found in the vehicle, testing was inconclusive at the time. Crime scene investigators also detected the presence of blood in Lambert’s home, but weren’t able to link it to any specific person.

Operation Craigslist is Revealed in Cliff Lambert Disappearance

Following the paper trial left behind in the case, investigators reached out to mobile notary Gary Hirsh, who received a late-night phone call to notarize the power of attorney document between Lambert and Niroula.

But the thumb print stored in his notary journal wasn’t from Lambert, it was actually linked to an attorney named David Replogle, who had posed as the wealthy art dealer as part of the complicated ruse.

“It appears that the plan was to clear out all of Cliff Lambert’s money as well as transfer the deed of his home into their control,” Hightower explained, “but there was no evidence that these con men definitively killed Cliff Lambert.”

That is, until data retrieved from Garcia’s devices revealed the chilling details behind the large-scale con job they called “Operation Craigslist.” 

Detectives learned that after the brief romance ended between Lambert and Garcia, a plan was set in place to kill the wealthy art dealer and take possession of his assets.

Bustamante and his roommate Craig McCarthy were hired as the muscle to kill Lambert on Dec. 5 in his home, then Replogle later posed as Lambert to sign over the legal documents.

As investigative reporter Karen Devine noted, “What these con men put together was a really diabolical plan.”

A Virginia man, accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. just one day before the January 6 Capitol Attack, claims he should be pardoned under President Donald Trump’s January 6 pardon proclamation. The Department of Justice, however, dismisses his assertion as “unavailing” and lacking in logic.

In a memorandum filed on Friday, the DOJ strongly refutes the March motion by Brian Cole Jr., the pipe bomb suspect, who seeks to have his case dismissed under Trump’s January 2025 pardon proclamation. The DOJ insists that even if the court were to find the proclamation applicable in this situation, the agency’s interpretation, responsible for enforcing the proclamation, remains consistent and reasonable.

Cole’s defense contends that his charges are “inextricably and demonstrably tethered” to the events of the January 6 Capitol riot, arguing for their dismissal. However, federal prosecutors provide several reasons to counter this argument, emphasizing that Trump’s proclamation clearly states that pardons are limited to “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” They also highlight Cole’s alleged confession.

The DOJ clarifies that the proclamation explicitly applies only to those convicted or facing indictment for the specified offenses. While the January 6 events offer some factual context, Cole’s actions on January 5 are not considered “related to” the Capitol events on January 6, according to the proclamation’s terms.

Brian Cole, 30, from Woodbridge, was recently arrested and charged in the District of Columbia. He faces charges of transporting an explosive device across state lines with the intent to harm individuals or unlawfully damage property, as well as attempted malicious destruction using fire and explosives.

According to federal prosecutors, Cole drove his Nissan Sentra to Washington, D.C., by himself on Jan. 5, 2021, to plant at least two pipe bombs downtown “in the immediate vicinity” of the RNC and DNC headquarters. The improvised explosive devices had 60-minute timers, but failed to detonate. Cole allegedly said he planted them at night “because he did not want to kill people,” according to the DOJ.

Federal prosecutors say Cole learned how to make the bombs by playing video games. He allegedly admitted that he is a Trump supporter but does not like “either party” and wanted to go after the RNC and DNC because he was sick of election deniers being called “conspiracy theorists” and other “bad” things.

“The defendant felt that ‘the people up top,’ including ‘people on both sides, public figures,’ should not ‘ignore people’s grievances’ or call them ‘conspiracy theorists,’ ‘bad people,’ ‘Nazis,’ or ‘fascists,” according to a DOJ memorandum that was filed in support of pretrial detention.

“Instead, ‘if people feel that their votes are like just being thrown away, then . . . at the very least someone should address it,’” Cole allegedly told federal investigators. “He explained that ‘something just snapped’ after ‘watching everything, just everything getting worse.’”

The DOJ says Cole’s pipe bombs were not discovered until approximately 1 p.m. on Jan. 6. “The FBI explosives examiner assessed that the pipe bombs were constructed using all the components necessary to explode and that they were viable explosive devices,” prosecutors say in the pretrial detention filing.

In their Friday memorandum, the DOJ says Cole’s offenses were “separate from the events of Jan. 6” as he planted explosive devices in publicly accessible locations near the RNC and DNC headquarters “under cover of darkness” on Jan. 5. “The devices did not explode as intended, they remained in plain view when daylight arrived the next day,” the DOJ says. “In the early afternoon on January 6, the bombs were discovered by a passerby and law enforcement in the area of the RNC and DNC. The events at the United States Capitol that day were only starting to unfold.”

Cole initially claimed he traveled to D.C. to show his support for Trump in the Jan. 6 protests and riots before allegedly admitting he went to plant the bombs ahead of the demonstrations and Capitol attack. “I didn’t agree with what people were doing, like just telling half the country that they – that their [votes] – that they just need to ignore it,” Cole allegedly told federal investigators. “In the defendant’s view, if people ‘feel that, you know, something as important as voting in the federal election is being tampered with, is being, you know, being – you know, relegated null and void, then, like, someone needs to speak up, right? Someone up top.”

Prosecutors note how Cole told federal agents that “something just snapped” in him after “watching everything, just everything getting worse.” They bring up how Cole allegedly told agents he wanted to do something “to the parties” because “they were in charge” and he did not like either party.

Given the focus on the political parties and not Congress, prosecutors say “it is hardly surprising” that Cole chose to target the headquarters of the DNC and RNC and not the Capitol, per the opposition filing. “Moreover, the defendant set the bombs to explode 60 minutes after placing them — i.e., on the night of Jan. 5, 2021,” the DOJ points out.

“It was only happenstance that the devices, which did not explode as intended, sat idle until the next afternoon when the events of Jan. 6 unfolded,” prosecutors conclude. “And, although the defendant was clearly motivated by then-recent events, the evidence shows that his interest in explosives and bombmaking (specifically, pipe bombs) dated back nearly a decade. In short, the defendant was upset about an issue that also motivated many who were convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, but he chose a different target, on a different day, and acted through different means than those to whom the proclamation was directed.”