PARIS – A jail inmate accused of plotting to have his ex-girlfriend and her husband killed told a court justice Thursday that he is not guilty of the two felony charges.

Mark Ambrose, 31, of Rumford, was taken from York County Jail to Oxford County Jail for his arraignment at Oxford County Superior Court in Paris.

Justice Robert E. Crowley set bail at $5,000 cash or $50,000 worth of property.

Assistant District Attorney Richard Beauchesne said Ambrose conspired with another inmate at the Oxford County Jail in August to plan the crimes against Bertha Jones, 28, of Mexico, and Shawn McKinnon, 40, of Mexico.

After the supposed plot was foiled, officials moved Ambrose to the jail in Alfred to separate him from an inmate, who Beauchesne said “played along” with Ambrose’s machinations.

“The plot was hatched while Ambrose was serving a sentence,” Beauchesne told Crowley. “It can’t get more serious than this.”

Ambrose has been charged with two counts of solicitation to commit murder.

“The other inmate told him he had some relations of friends who might get the job done,” Beauchesne said in a phone interview after the arraignment.

Ambrose had been in the Oxford County jail since April when he violated his probation for criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon, according to James Hoyt, a jail supervisor.

He was arrested on the two new charges Aug. 23.

According to police, Ambrose spoke with his faux conspirator and fellow inmate between Aug. 15 and Aug. 23, arranging the crime and offering an undisclosed amount of money. When police were told of the scheme, they intercepted some of Ambroses’s correspondence with the hired killer, and eventually undercover officers visited the jail, one posing as the hit man, according to police.

The maximum punishment for the crime is 30 years, Beauchesne said.