A document courier accused of twice trying to hire someone to kill his ex-wife’s boyfriend told a jury in opening statements at his trial Monday that police entrapped him and that people who had previously blackmailed him set him up.

Anthony Mark Albert is being tried on two counts of criminal solicitation to commit murder. He is representing himself in the case but has a court-appointed lawyer as co-counsel.

The state says that on March 6, 2007, Albert told an undercover police officer posing as a hit man that he wanted his ex-wife’s then-boyfriend — now husband — killed and that he wanted the killing to look like it happened in the course of a robbery. The state said Albert told the undercover officer he paid someone else $5,000 to do the job, but that person reneged.

The officer taped the conversation in an undercover police vehicle rigged with an audio and video recording device.

Deputy Prosecutor Maurice Arrisgado played portions of the recording for jurors.

In one segment Albert tells the officer his wife is responsible for taking his children from him twice in five years, for his no-contact order and felony charge.

"What I need is her rug pulled out from under her, and her sugar daddy is the obstacle," he said.

In other segments he tells the officer the boyfriend’s name, where he works and what he wants to happen to the boyfriend.

"It’s hard to say, but, yeah, I want him gone."

Albert tells the officer he can come up with $15,000 for the job and in another segment suggests stabbing the boyfriend at his workplace on Sand Island.

"And make it look like the homeless guy (robbed) him," he added. "And in that location that would pass as attempted robbery."

Albert told the jurors that not once during the nearly two-hour recorded meeting with the officer did he bring up the subject of money or agree to hire him. He said it was the officer who brought up the subject of money and repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to get him to say words that would constitute solicitation.

He said he knew that the person who called police is someone who had blackmailed him in the past and was trying to get more money from him. Albert said he didn’t know the supposed hit man was a police officer, but believed he was the informant’s partner, so he had concocted a plan to deceive them.