October 1st, 2013, Southern California. A typical weekday afternoon inside a quiet local cafe. At one of the tables sit two men, 52-year-old business owner Dino Guggli and his associate Richard Ferman. They order hot meals and carry on a calm, measured conversation. To everyone around them, it looks ordinary.
The surrounding guests pay no attention. Yet among them are plainclothes officers, quietly observing every move. The conversation lasts about 90 minutes. Most of it revolves around routine business matters, but for roughly 15 minutes, the tone shifts. The discussion turns to something far more serious. Dino reveals that his wife, Monica Olsen, is currently vacationing in Mexico.
Then he makes it clear she needs to be gone before she returns to the United States. The timeline is tight, just a matter of hours. The millionaire lays out the scenario in chilling detail. He insists that her end should be drawn out and severe. He gives a direct instruction to sever her head and leave the body in a roadside ditch.
When Ferman asks how his two daughters, Wendela and Siana, would cope without their mother, Dino responds without hesitation.
“I’m a good father. I’ll find someone new, someone better than their biological mother.”
The agreed price is $80,000. Dino doesn’t ask for updates or proof. He calmly states that he’ll read about it in the news. When lunch ends, he stands up, says goodbye, and walks out to his car.
What he doesn’t realize is that a recording device has been secured beneath the table, and every word he spoke has already been captured on Ferman’s recorder.
The following morning, October 2nd, 2013, police vehicles pull up to the gates of a private estate in Valencia, California. The property spans just over an acre, with Dino Guggli’s mansion sitting at its center. The home, roughly 7,000 square feet, featuring six bedrooms, a massive kitchen, and a saltwater pool, becomes the site of a major law enforcement operation.
The era of luxury behind those walls is about to end.
When officers arrive, Dino is inside with his daughters, Wendela and Siana. Law enforcement enters the residence and informs the 52-year-old businessman that he is being detained on suspicion of arranging a serious crime. In front of his daughters, metal handcuffs are placed around his wrists.
The contrast is striking. Uniformed officers moving through a space filled with high-end furniture and elegant decor. Dino does not physically resist, but immediately begins building his defense. He firmly denies any wrongdoing.
During initial questioning, he claims that Richard Ferman set him up deliberately. According to Dino, Ferman had been trying to take control of their shared business, a company focused on dietary supplements and vitamins. He insists that Ferman frequently complained about Monica Olsen, arguing that she stood in the way of expanding the company and interfered with securing lucrative contracts with the Department of Defense.
Dino insists that Richard was the one with a motive to remove Monica to gain full unhindered control over the corporation’s affairs. The millionaire tries to convince everyone in the room that Ferman is a manipulator, someone who pulled him into a dangerous scheme for his own financial benefit.
Even so, the arrest warrant is issued in the name of the estate’s owner. Guggli is escorted out of the mansion and placed into a patrol vehicle, taken away from a home that just a day earlier felt like an untouchable fortress. He is transported to the county jail to face formal charges.
At the center of the case against Dino Guggli is a 90-minute audio recording captured on the day of that cafe meeting. While the detained millionaire sits in a holding cell attempting to shift blame onto his business partner, investigators begin piecing together how that recording came to exist.
It turns out that Richard Ferman, the same man Dino now calls a traitor, approached law enforcement on his own even before that fateful lunch. He told authorities that his longtime associate was actively searching for a way to permanently get rid of his wife.
To Dino, 46-year-old Richard Ferman had always carried the image of a man with special connections. On paper, he was a former serviceman who, after being injured and discharged, transitioned into business. Later, investigators would discover that his military career lasted only a year and ended without distinction. But to Dino, Rick remained a trusted ally.
Instead of carrying out the requested crime, Ferman agreed to act as a confidential informant. From that point forward, every phone call and every meeting between the two men unfolded under the watchful eye of detectives.
The cafe operation was no coincidence. It was carefully orchestrated from start to finish. Before the lunch began, technicians installed a recording device beneath the table, while Ferman himself was fitted with a hidden microphone. Plainclothes officers seated nearby weren’t just observing. They were ready to step in if the situation escalated into aggression.
Rick’s task was simple: get Dino to confirm his intentions and discuss payment. That objective was ultimately achieved. While Guggli laid out the details of Monica Olsen’s planned removal and agreed on the $80,000 payment, Monica herself was never in danger.
Ferman had deliberately misled Dino, telling him she was traveling in Mexico to create the illusion of the perfect window for the crime. In reality, law enforcement had placed Monica in a secure California hotel. She remained under constant protection, waiting for confirmation that the recording was complete and that there was enough evidence to detain her husband.
That audio file left Dino with little room to argue misunderstanding or coincidence. His words clearly outlined instructions for carrying out the crime.
Dino Guggli’s story began decades before that meeting in a California cafe. He was born in 1961 in Washington State and grew up in a large family, one of seven siblings. His early years on a farm and the responsibility of helping his parents shaped his view of hard work as the primary path to success.
As a young man, Dino was passionate about music and set his sights on becoming a rock performer. He dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles to pursue that dream. But when music failed to provide financial stability, he was forced to change direction.
At the age of 20, Dino Guggli took a job mopping floors at a waste processing plant. Within three years, he worked his way up to office manager. Seven years after that, he stepped into the role of managing director. Alongside his rapid career climb, Dino studied the fundamentals of business administration.
By the time he turned 30, he launched his own company focused on dietary supplements and organic cosmetics. The core idea behind the business was simple but powerful: extending life and preserving physical appearance. It quickly found strong demand in the market.
The venture scaled fast. At its peak, Dino oversaw four manufacturing facilities employing around 300 people. The company generated approximately $48 million in annual revenue. That level of income allowed the millionaire to embrace a distinctly lavish lifestyle, purchasing high-end real estate and maintaining a fleet of luxury vehicles.
By that point, Dino had already experienced marriage and divorce. From his first marriage, he had a son and a daughter, and after the separation, he remained actively involved in their upbringing.
The circumstances surrounding his split from his first wife, Leia, revealed the methods Dino relied on when handling personal conflicts. During the divorce proceedings, he accused her of domestic aggression and involvement with prohibited substances. As a result of the legal battle, Leia lost custody rights to their son and daughter, forfeited her share in their joint supplement business, and was forced to leave the family home.
Later, she would claim that Dino acted with calculated precision, using false allegations to secure full control over both the assets and the family. This chapter of his life set the tone for what would follow.
Monica Olsen, born in 1981 in Canada, balanced a modeling career with a strong academic background. She earned a master’s degree in finance and spoke seven languages.
In the summer of 2003, 22-year-old Monica met 42-year-old Dino Guggli in Los Angeles. Just six months later, during a trip to Italy, he proposed. After an upscale wedding in New York, the couple settled into their estate in Valencia.
In 2005 and 2007, their daughters, Wendela and Siana, were born. For several years, Monica focused entirely on raising Wendela and Siana and managing the household, providing Dino with a stable home life while he continued expanding his business empire.
But as the years passed and her daughters grew older, Monica’s earlier ambitions began to resurface. She had no intention of remaining in what felt like a golden cage. Determined to reclaim her independence, she made the decision to return to her professional career. That shift became the starting point for the first serious conflicts and ultimately the unraveling of the Guggli family dynamic.
The next chapter in the family story began in 2008 when Monica Olsen, with Dino’s initial support, launched her own organic skincare brand, Skin by Monica Olsen. By 2011, what started as a passion project had grown into a profitable business. Her products were picked up by two major retail chains, and Monica herself returned to active modeling work in Hollywood, New York, and Milan.
The success of the brand gave her something she had long been seeking: financial independence from her millionaire husband. But as her visibility and autonomy grew, Dino’s reaction turned sharply negative. He demanded that Monica stop traveling and dedicate herself entirely to the home and raising Wendela and Siana.
When Dino realized that financial leverage over his wife was slipping away, he began systematically dismantling her business and professional reputation. Using his authority as the owner of the parent company, Guggli unilaterally canceled contracts with the retail chains that carried Monica’s products. He disrupted logistics, preventing shipments from reaching stores, and terminated key staff members.
The millionaire effectively tore down a thriving business, his own wife’s business, simply to cut off her source of income. Around the same time, he dismissed the longtime nanny of Wendela and Siana, claiming the employee had grown too close to Monica.
During this period, Dino’s appearance and behavior also underwent a dramatic shift. At the age of 50, he abruptly returned to his teenage passion for music. He dyed his hair jet black, began painting his nails, and formed a rock band where he took on the role of frontman. He described it as a creative revival, but Monica and those close to the family saw it differently, as a sign of growing instability.
Dino’s brother, who lived in the Valencia mansion for about six months, later described the home environment as a constant conflict zone where neither side was willing to compromise.
By the end of 2011, living together had become impossible. Dino formally initiated divorce proceedings. To minimize contact with Monica, he moved into a separate guest house on the grounds of their shared Valencia estate. While still legally married, the millionaire began openly pursuing relationships with other women.
No longer hiding his lifestyle from his wife, the tension inside the property reached a breaking point, shifting the conflict from financial disputes into something far more personal and threatening.
On the evening of January 16th, 2012, months of escalating confrontation inside the Valencia estate boiled over into an incident that would drastically alter the course of the divorce. Another argument erupted between the spouses, this time in front of Wendela and Siana.
As the verbal clash intensified, Monica led the girls into their room and locked the door from the inside. Isolated, she called emergency services, but it turned out Dino Guggli had already placed a similar call just minutes earlier. The millionaire told the dispatcher that he had been the target of physical aggression from his wife.
As proof, he showed responding officers a photo of marks on his neck, claiming that Monica had struck him in the face. Despite the lack of serious injuries and the presence of visibly frightened Wendela and Siana inside the home, officers sided with Dino. Monica Olsen was escorted out of the mansion in handcuffs and taken to the station.
She spent the next 24 hours in a holding cell alongside individuals detained for serious crimes. A case was initiated against her on misdemeanor charges, including domestic aggression.
While Monica remained in custody, Dino moved quickly to execute a legal strategy aimed at fully removing her from the family dynamic. Using the fact of her arrest and the formal accusations, he secured a restraining order in a short period of time, one that legally barred Monica from approaching him or returning to the house.
The outcome of that night was decisive. Sole custody of Wendela and Siana was granted to their father. Monica was forced to leave the family estate, effectively losing the ability to see her daughters. The move mirrored the strategy Dino had used during his first divorce from Leia, once again establishing complete control over both the situation and the household.
At that point, Guggli believed he had permanently pushed Monica out of his life, not anticipating that she would begin a legal fight to prove her innocence.
During the period when Dino held sole custody of Wendela and Siana, his closest confidant became Richard Ferman. Their connection extended beyond personal trust. They were also partners in a business supplying vitamins and dietary supplements for military contracts.
In Dino’s eyes, Rick carried the weight of someone with a military background and valuable connections within defense circles. But behind that image was a very different reality. Ferman had served in the army for just one year before being discharged due to injury. His military path had been short and unsuccessful. Yet to Dino, he continued to play the role of a problem solver with specialized expertise.
Their partnership was also marked by financial deception. To maintain Dino’s interest in the business and keep him confident in their future, Ferman resorted to outright fraud. He routinely forged signatures on documents, creating the illusion that multi-million dollar contracts with the Department of Defense were close to being finalized.
While Dino believed in these deals, his personal finances were already under strain from the divorce proceedings. Initially, he had been ordered to pay Monica Olsen $55,000 per month in support. In an effort to reduce that burden, Dino filed claims of financial hardship within his company, which ultimately led to the payments being lowered to $25,000 per month.
Even that reduction wasn’t enough for Dino Guggli. He began searching for a way to eliminate the payments entirely and to remove Monica from the legal landscape of the United States for good.
The first joint scheme between him and Richard Ferman focused on discrediting her. Dino provided Ferman with a duplicate set of keys to Monica’s car along with detailed information about her daily routes and whereabouts. The plan was to plant prohibited substances inside the vehicle and orchestrate her detention by law enforcement.
The calculation was straightforward. An arrest tied to possession would likely result in Monica’s visa being revoked and her deportation to Canada. At the same time, Dino’s divorce attorney advised him to stop the fight, pay what was required, and move on with his life separately.
The attorney made it clear that the case was unlikely to go in Dino’s favor and that continued resistance made little sense. But Guggli refused to follow that advice. He had no intention of dividing the business, the assets, or his daughters. In his view, Monica Olsen had become an obstacle, one that needed to be removed by any means available.
Richard Ferman documented these demands, effectively becoming the executor of the first steps in this plan.
In the middle of the prolonged divorce battle, a new element emerged in the communication between Dino and Ferman, one that temporarily shifted the millionaire’s strategy. Ferman told his partner that Monica Olsen was seriously ill. He claimed that he had personally played a role in exposing her to a life-threatening condition.
According to this version of events, her health would rapidly decline, leading to an inevitable fatal outcome caused by related complications. Dino’s reaction to this information was immediate and unmistakable. A wide smile spread across his face, and he openly admitted that the news pleased him.
He decided that this outcome would be enough, that it spared him from taking further direct action. For a period of time, Dino believed that his legal and financial problems would resolve themselves due to natural causes. He stopped pushing for any immediate steps toward physically removing his wife.
But the medical story Ferman presented was entirely fabricated. Later, during the official investigation, Richard admitted that he invented the illness to calm Dino down and steer him away from more extreme plans. Monica Olsen remained completely healthy, and no such condition ever existed.
Ferman used the lie as a tool of manipulation, fully aware that Dino would accept any scenario that promised a prolonged and severe outcome for his wife. Investigators and the court later took note of the nature of this relationship, pointing out that both men were deeply engaged in deceiving one another.
While Dino found satisfaction in the false narrative about Monica’s condition, Ferman continued forging signatures on business documents, maintaining the illusion of upcoming high-value military contracts. Prosecutors described their alliance as a partnership between two individuals with similarly questionable moral compasses, while the judge during proceedings used language that highlighted Ferman’s pattern of fraud and fabrication.
This pause caused by the false story only delayed Dino’s move toward the final stage of his plan.
The plan to physically remove Monica Olsen entered its active phase several months before the cafe meeting. At the moment when Dino Guggli’s legal strategy completely collapsed after 13 months of court proceedings, Monica succeeded in proving her innocence and all allegations of domestic aggression against her were dismissed.
Having lost sole custody and control over the situation, Dino began calling Richard Ferman five to ten times a week, demanding that the process of eliminating his wife be accelerated. Dino insisted that Monica’s death should appear as the result of a conflict involving dealers of prohibited substances. He demanded an especially brutal outcome, stating that her head should be severed and her body left in a roadside ditch.
For carrying out this plan, Guggli promised Ferman $80,000. At the same time, while discussing the crime, the businessman was also preparing an exit strategy. He secretly transferred $4.5 million to overseas accounts, planning to eventually leave the country with Wendela and Siana.
As preparations moved forward, Dino provided his partner not only with a duplicate set of Monica’s car keys, but also detailed information about her movements and daily routine. He made it clear that he didn’t want to be involved in the technical aspects of the crime, expecting instead to learn about its completion through news reports.
While Ferman pretended to be arranging contacts in Mexico, Dino was already talking about the future of Wendela and Siana without their mother. He told Richard:
“I’m a good father. I’ll easily find a new woman for them, someone who will surpass their biological mother in care and upbringing.”
Every one of these phone calls was recorded by Ferman, who by that point was actively cooperating with law enforcement.
In the summer of 2014, the case went to trial in California. Dino Guggli initially maintained his innocence, portraying himself as the victim of a setup. He claimed that Richard Ferman had fabricated the entire case in an attempt to take over their shared business.
However, the weight of the evidence collected by investigators forced him to change his approach. In order to avoid a life sentence, Dino agreed to a plea deal. The millionaire pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree crime. In court, he stated that he was doing so at his mother’s request.
The final sentence was nine years in prison. Monica Olsen openly expressed her disagreement with the outcome, describing the punishment as too lenient. In her statement, she emphasized that the intent itself constitutes a serious crime. She compared the situation to a shot that missed its target purely by chance, pointing out that missing does not make the person who pulled the trigger any less dangerous.
Immediately after the final court decision was announced, the marriage between Dino and Monica was officially dissolved. Monica Olsen was granted a legal divorce, bringing their nine-year relationship to an end. Dino Guggli was transferred to a state prison to serve his sentence.
All of his attempts to portray Richard Ferman as the sole architect of the scheme were rejected by the court based on the recorded evidence already on file.
After Dino was sent to prison, his corporation was put up for auction. The proceeds were used to cover outstanding debts, ultimately leading to the complete collapse of the business. Monica Olsen was awarded the Valencia estate, but she was unable to live there due to a constant sense of fear. She sold the property for $3 million and purchased a modest apartment for herself and Wendela and Siana.
Her attempt to relaunch an organic skincare business was unsuccessful. The new venture operated at a loss. Dino Guggli was released in 2021 after serving his full sentence.
Today, Monica admits that she still reacts to every unfamiliar sound, and her life has become a constant state of anticipating potential danger.
