In the latest twist in one of the most bizarre and bitter New York divorce cases in memory, a criminal suit accusing a father of taking out a hit against his daughter’s husband has been dismissed.

Last week, a district-court judge threw out a case against Anatoly Potik that claimed he had paid a Russian assassin $100,000 to take out shipping magnate Oleg Mitnik, his daughter Ronit Mitnik’s estranged husband. Oleg told the FBI that he only survived because he paid the would-be hit man $125,000 not to go through with the job.

But now sources in New York socialite Ronit’s camp speculate that Oleg drew attention to the supposed plot as a red herring in their bitter $20 million divorce battle, which also involves a custody fight over their two children and has been raging since 2014.

Based on the court’s swift dismissal of the bizarre tale, the same sources speculate that either Oleg himself set up the plot in order to make it seem as if he were being threatened by his wife’s family, or that someone else masterminded a scam designed to get Oleg to write a check for the $125,000, which he says he did.

Either way, insiders believe the alleged assassination saga may have been used as an astonishing strategy in divorce court.

“Oleg has what’s been purported to be hundreds of millions of dollars sitting overseas and doesn’t want to give that up in the divorce,” said a source. “This was a great diversion.”

The criminal suit, filed on Jan. 22, claimed that Ronit told Oleg “late in the evening” on Jan. 20 that she “would entertain a proposed [divorce] settlement” if he “would tell law enforcement he had made things up” regarding the assassination attempt. But the warring couple is still nowhere near a settlement.

Potik’s attorney Robert Stahl said, “Through hard work and presenting evidence and through the further investigation by the government, they realized that the charges should be dismissed.” An attorney for Oleg — who runs TRT International, a Newark, NJ, freight-shipping company — said his client has done nothing wrong.