He imagined Michelle would have her own high-powered career. After she became pregnant with their fourth child, he had a vasectomy. Jolie had episodes of depression and planned to commit suicide twice—at age 19 and again at 22, when she attempted to hire a hitman to kill her. After learning about the threat to the victim’s life, FBI agents notified the victim, provided her protection, and questioned Wan. Wan admitted that he had placed the order, made the payments, and checked the status of the order daily on the dark web marketplace. After speaking with FBI agents, Wan canceled the order on the dark web marketplace.
“In America, police told one of the targets that he thought we were the scammers. In Switzerland, the police told one of the targets they suspected we were running the site for a story. There was no evidence that any of that was true. With Monteiro’s help, Miller was able to review private messages between clients and the website’s owner. According to The Guardian, the website was a scam run by a Romanian crook who had no intention of providing the sinister services. “It also moved to justifications for why the person needs to die,” he shared. “Some of these kill orders would go on, page after page,” Miller recalled.
The websites frequently talk about anonymity and have guarantees everywhere but have no mention of using a specific, trusted, escrow. Of course, any guarantees are completely worthless when dealing with such highly illegal activity. The researchers pointed out that, despite being covered in trust-signals, all of the sites just felt untrustworthy. PrivacyAffairs discovered a number of telltale warning signs of scams. However, over the years Mr Monteiro discovered the websites he had been hacking into were not what they seemed to be. Chris Monteiro is a UK-based hacker and dark web vigilante who gains access to transactions between buyers and sellers on these sites.
🕵️♀️ Law Enforcement Stings
They were about to take a drive, maybe get some food, when Stern’s phone buzzed. An officer with the local department told her to come down to the station immediately. A few months ago, a middle-aged executive in Singapore was sent to jail for five years after paying the Camorra Hitman site to kill the boyfriend of his young ex-lover in a staged car accident that, not surprisingly, didn’t happen.
- It’s like the rebellious cousin of the internet we all know and love.
- After sending payment, Zhou provided a detailed description of Victim-1, including her home, her work schedule, and the best times to target Victim-1, so that Victim-1’s husband would have an alibi for the murder.
- The ‘clients’ paid up-front for assassinations that would never be carried out.
- The more involved we became in the lives of all of these people around the world, the more it heightened my anxieties about their safety.
Romanian Scammers Ran Fake Hitman-for-hire Site, Lured Desperate Perpetrators As ‘incompetent Assassins’
We got to the point where the children couldn’t really play outside much.” He went back to Zillow and found a seven-bedroom house in Cedar City, Utah, and purchased it for $659,000 in November 2020. Soon after they moved in, Christopher’s sister visited and took pictures of the entire family playing in the snow, including a newly born 11th biological child. The Pences had a series of difficult conversations with their newly adopted children. One was especially excited that Christina and Cisco had moved to the same state because he thought he would see them more often.
The Sometimes Terrifying, Sometimes Bewildering World Of Murder Marketplaces
The search has led “48 Hours” to England, India, the Eastern European country of Moldova and eventually culminated in a dramatic encounter in Queens, New York. The people targeted in Pence’s failed murder-for-hire plot were residents of Hoosick Falls, a village near Albany. Their identities have been protected throughout the federal investigation and Pence’s criminal trial.
Antique Store Owner’s Murder Reveals “Dark Tale Of Lust”
“The threat posed by so-called assassination markets is going to be pretty small in comparison to other things we deal with,” an NCA spokesperson told me. “We aren’t monitoring the website and there have been no arrests. However, we work closely with our international law enforcement partners to share information and intelligence,” a second spokesperson later added. Monteiro says that he was devastated when Allwine was arrested. Up to that point, the idea that he could have saved lives – that the kill list he had been frantically trying to hand to law enforcement had a portentous power – had essentially been a thought experiment. This was the perfect environment for scammers – impenetrable to search engines and rife with illegality.
Parents Kill 4 Children In Dominican Republic Amid Spate Of Such Murders
These marketplaces and forums are often hidden behind multiple layers of encryption, making it difficult for law enforcement to track down the individuals responsible. Payment for services is typically made in cryptocurrency, which further adds to the anonymity of the transactions. The Justice Department did not disclose how it became aware of Felkins’ actions. Tor Search engine used to search for popular .onion sites that advertise many known scams. He said she helped him in his planned Appalachian Trail hike by making reservations at known hostels and other rest points and took care of his vehicle for him in his absence. Following the incident, she began receiving unpleasant untraceable phone calls from someone using an electronic device to disguise a voice, court documents said.
As the initial investigation began, he falsely claimed to have been instructing the hitmen to kill him, instead of his victims. During our investigation, we came across several websites providing a vast array of violent services, charging fees that varied from 5,000 to 200,000 dollars. RentAHitman.com is a satirical1 website purporting to offer contract killers for hire.
US Woman Hired Dark Web Hitman To Kill Online Match’s Wife, Gets 100 Months In Jail
- “It’s great an international law enforcement operation took down these criminals, but when will they ever proactively investigate the thousands of names on the kill list?
- Without Yura, neither Monteiro nor law enforcement nor journalists would have ever heard of Stephen “Dogdaydog” Allwine in Minnesota, the man in Singapore, or the woman in Denmark.
- Prosecutors believe Amy’s husband shot her in cold blood after his attempt to hire a hit man failed.
- “Investigations are ongoing, and the NCA will continue to work with international law enforcement partners to identify users of sites like these,” said Lucy Sneddon, a spokeswoman for the agency.
Christopher Robertson, 42, of Fairburn, Georgia, made his initial court appearance today before United States Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas on federal charges of communicating interstate threats. Miller recently joined us on the Cybercrime Magazine Podcast for a riveting discussion on his investigation into the darknet site. Many people have idly fantasized about wanting to be rid of their ex, or boss, or perhaps a celebrity. But a few, motivated by hatred, jealousy or rage, have taken matters a step further. Our investigation has spanned more than 11 countries, and involved the FBI, Interpol, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Crime Agency, and local police forces all over the world. It’s now the subject of a podcast series, Kill List, from Wondery and Novel.
They branded themselves as a branch of the mafia, and promised murder for sale, at the click of a button. When a kill list was discovered on a Dark Web website advertising hitmen for hire, it was already too late for one target. But sometime, somewhere, warmhearted Amy Allwine had made an enemy. In spring of 2016, long before “48 Hours” began its investigation, the FBI learned about a murder-for-hire site called Besa Mafia — people paying for other people to be killed — and began looking into it. Nevertheless, the legend of this underground website is likely to persist.
🧠 The Origins Of The Hitmen-for-Hire Myth
He says those people could have left clues at the crime scene, but first responders bungled the investigation. Prosecutor Jamie Kreuser says the smoking gun was a 34-character code in a message from Dogdaygod, paying for Amy’s murder in bitcoin — that digital currency that people on the dark web often use to buy and sell anonymously. The problem for Stephen Allwine was that code was on his computer. Afterwards, Innes converted RentAHitman.com to a supposed front for a contract killing agency, though he included numerous jokes in its content to clearly signal the site is a parody. Despite this, Innes’ site has resulted in several further convictions for those attempting to employ the supposed services, as he checks messages sent to him and refers any serious requests to law enforcement agencies.
There is multiple techniques, tactics, and procedural information to be found as well as braggadocios accounts of hacks. If you are a journalist or whistleblower in an oppressive country, perhaps-if you really have that as the only option to pass information. If you are that curious, watch a video of a dark web surfer on Youtube. There have been a few confirmed incidents where individuals attempted to hire hitmen via the Dark Web — but almost all involved undercover officers or fake services. In most cases, no actual hitmen were ever involved, just scams or stings.
Miller is the host of a new true-crime podcast on Wondery, “Kill List.” It explores how Miller came across a fake hitman-for-hire site on the dark web, prompting him and his team to warn police. Carl Miller still gets sick to his stomach whenever he remembers seeing all the smiling faces of people who were targeted to be killed by so-called assassins. We decided to investigate a few of the sites offering such services to learn a bit about what they promise, and for how much they are potentially scamming would-be customers of murder services.
