They hoped to adopt an entire “young sibling group, who are having trouble staying together because of size,” she wrote on one listings website, adding that they would not mind remaining in contact with the children’s biological parents. Christopher was an unlikely client in the murder-for-hire trade. When he wasn’t logging ten-to-12-hour days working, often while listening to one of his favorite Christian rock bands, he was helping his wife, Michelle, raise their 11 biological and five adopted children. The entire family, along with Christopher’s retired parents, lived in a 5,800-square-foot home on the northern edge of the Mojave Desert, surrounded by wind-raked brushland and snow-capped mountains in all directions. They were building greenhouses on the property and had plans to buy cows. The Times reports that a hitman-for-hire website set up on the dark web is estimated to have taken more than £400,000 from individuals who have ordered the deaths of about 175 innocent people.
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In 2020, I was slingshotted into a desperate race against time to save the lives of people I’d never met, from all over the world. Never miss the biggest stories with breaking news alerts in your inbox. The investigator managed to trace the website to Romania, where the FBI conducted raids on five addresses. When he was arrested, police discovered an apartment he secretly rented near her home, stocked with a sub-machine gun, AK47 rifle, pistols and a flick knife. Usually they were the wives, girlfriends and ex-partners of men determined to take them out, Miller wrote for MailOnline. The gun was on the wrong side of Amy’s body, there were bloody footprints through the house, Mr Allwine insisted on being accompanied by a lawyer for questioning.
Antique Store Owner’s Murder Reveals “Dark Tale Of Lust”
One weekday in the summer of 2021, Christopher Pence entered his home office in Cedar City, Utah, and plugged a USB stick into his computer. He booted up Tails, an operating system designed to optimize privacy, and used it to access the dark web — a marketplace teeming with illicit goods and services like child pornography, weapons, and drugs. Christopher, who was 41 and worked for Microsoft as a systems engineer, wanted to hire a hit man to kill a young couple he had met on only a handful of occasions.
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.
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. James Wan, 54, of Duluth, Georgia, has been sentenced to seven years, three months in prison to be followed by two years of supervised release.
She provided approximately $5,000 in cash to a middleman in Brooklyn and then communicated with the website administrator to confirm payment. After sending payment, Zhou provided a detailed description of the woman and her home, her work schedule, and the best times to target her, so the woman’s husband would have an alibi for the murder. Monteiro’s research suggested all such websites to be either harmless trolling or scams designed to rob people of their bitcoins. He could find no evidence of anybody ever being killed by a hitman hired online, nor of any hitman working online. Let’s put on our detective hats and investigate the hitman-for-hire myth further.
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It used the same source code as Besa Mafia, which conveniently allowed Monteiro to continue to read the site’s correspondence. Five men believed to be behind the web’s most notorious murder for hire scheme were arrested in Romania this week, in part of an operation aimed at putting an end to the infamous dark web scam. The tale of Dark Web hitmen is more fantasy than fact — a chilling blend of fear, fiction, and fragmented truth. While the Dark Web does host illicit activity, the hitman-for-hire market is almost entirely composed of scams and law enforcement traps.
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Instead, he killed Amy himself, then tried to make it look like suicide – though he left the gun on the wrong side of the body and trailed bloody footprints through the house. He was charged with first degree murder and, in 2018, sentenced to life in prison without parole. One typical excuse was that the target was too well protected for a single hitman to kill.
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We decided to investigate dark web sites offering hitmen and similar services to learn a bit about what they promise, and for how much they are potentially scamming would-be murder solicitors. A Tennessee woman who tried to hire a hitman to kill the then-fiancée of a “hiking friend” she met on the online dating website Match.com has been sentenced to eight years in prison. However, law enforcement agencies often struggle to prosecute cyber mercenaries, especially when they operate across international borders. Many offensive cyber firms set up shop in countries with weak regulations, providing hacking tools and services to buyers worldwide. White-hat hackers and cybersecurity firms routinely offer penetration testing (ethical hacking) services to help companies find and fix vulnerabilities before bad actors exploit them. These legitimate cybersecurity professionals operate within strict legal and ethical guidelines, often with government contracts and regulatory oversight.
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- The Cordero children were also wounded by the fact that their parents were continuing to have more kids.
- He says those people could have left clues at the crime scene, but first responders bungled the investigation.
- The British police were at least prepared to listen but because there were no UK targets at that point, all they could do was to forward to kill orders to Interpol.
- He learned about Tails while reading about Edward Snowden, who used the operating system to hide his activities from the National Security Agency.
- There is a website, though – a succession of websites, to be precise – where all those things are made out to be true.
A picture from that day shows the Pences with all 15 children smiling broadly as they crowd together behind the judge’s bench. No, it is illegal to hire a hitman, regardless of where you do it. If you come across any listings for hitmen on the dark web, you should report them to law enforcement immediately. Stephen Allwine had paid Yura thousands of dollars to arrange a hit on his wife Amy. Anthonia is a fintech writer who has been involved in the crypto space since 2017 covering developments across regulations, adoption, and several other aspects of the Industry. When not neck-deep in the crypto news cycle, Anthonia spends her free time globetrotting and playing video games.
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And she quickly spotted her first clue – a massive trail of hacked digital data. Digging through that treasure trove, Lisa believes she’s unearthed a few gold nuggets – including Yura’s likely password from one of his early murder-for-hire sites. Alexis noticed that Mastermind365 sometimes referred to himself with a lowercase “i” and said when Fry wrote her, he did the same thing. She also saw that Mastermind365 wrote “thankyou” as one word. It’s a quirk that would become more significant later in our investigation. She says the murder-for-hire sites are all about making big money, and that she found millions of dollars of profits in an online account she believes is linked to Yura.
- Law enforcement agencies have specialized units that are trained to investigate criminal activity on the dark web.
- Yura reassured his customers that the leak was not a big deal.
- When police checked his phone, they discovered Stephen had been hooking up with numerous women using dating apps.
- While the hitman-for-hire myth might be somewhat overblown, it’s essential to maintain sight of the real dangers on the Dark Web.
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A few days later, someone from Besa Mafia got in touch. “Helo, I am one of the admins of the Besa Mafia website on deep web sic,” the email read. “Would it be possible for us to pay for a true and honest positive review? Let me know if we can prove to you that we are legit.” It was signed “Yura”. There are no sharply dressed assassins screwing silencers on to their Glocks, no operatives assigned, nor capos directing them.
When people hear the words ‘dark web’ they automatically presume it’s the cyber equivalent of the wild-west where you can hire a hitman or watch someone have their leg sawed off in real-time. At Thursday’s sentencing hearing, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that it appeared the “hitman” who accepted funds from Ms. Murphy likely never intended to carry out the murder. NEW YORK — A Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York task force investigation resulted in the indictment of a Queens woman charged with murder for hire. “People are going to these sites and providing details of the person they want killed, such as where they work, where they live and how much they’re willing to pay.” “Unfortunately, this site has been hacked,” the admin had responded. He pretended to be the hacker, hoping to stop Dogdaygod from badgering him, and make some money on the side.
” Two weeks later, Christopher transferred $16,000 worth of bitcoin and submitted orders to kill the Corderos. He’d exploited a vulnerability in the site to gain access to the back end, and now, astonishingly, he could see everything that the site administrators could see. The details of who they wanted killed and how, with smiling photos of each target. And payments in bitcoin for the hits—many in the tens of thousands of dollars. The website attracted customers from every corner of the world.
