“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. The saga began in 2020 when Chris Monteiro, an IT technician and hacker, was browsing the site and found a security vulnerability that gave him complete access to it, The Guardian reported. According to the outlet, he found a “kill list,” a spreadsheet listing hundreds of people from all over the world whom clients wanted eliminated. đ Criminals may think their payments are invisible, but blockchain analysis tools often tell a different story. Many so-called “hitman” sites simply collect payment and vanish â leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for investigators. There have been a few confirmed incidents where individuals attempted to hire hitmen via the Dark Web â but almost all involved undercover officers or fake services.
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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.
Do Hitmen Really Exist? Who Exactly Employs Them?
On a sunny July day in 2018, Alexis Stern was sitting behind the wheel of the red Ford Fusion her parents had given her the previous year when sheâd learned to drive. Robbie Olsen, the boy sheâd recently started dating, was in the passenger seat. They were in the kind of high spirits unique to teenagers on summer vacation with nothing much to do and nowhere in particular to go. They were about to take a drive, maybe get some food, when Sternâs phone buzzed.
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The most prolific research on these sites has been conducted by Chris Monteiro, a systems administrator in London who has pursued his investigations as a morbid passion project on top of his regular job. The site 18th Street Mafia includes a page with links to news stories about real killings it says it helped commit. None of the articles, however, indicate that the site, or even a hit man, was responsible. Yura refused to provide evidence of his communications with the FBI, as that would prove that his website is a scam. Pleading with me not to report that, he offered to hand over the names of all the targets. He finally said he would deny ever speaking to me if I wrote that his business was a scam.
Hiring A Hitman On The Web: Can Contractual Violence Be Added To Your Online Shopping Cart?
â Two weeks later, Christopher transferred $16,000 worth of bitcoin and submitted orders to kill the Corderos. Wan then transferred an additional Bitcoin payment worth nearly $8,000 to the marketplace. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan James Wan, 54 used cryptocurrency to pay for the murder-for-hire plot. However, the FBI successfully intercepted Ilgâs communications on the dark web and thwarted his plans. As the initial investigation began, he falsely claimed to have been instructing the hitmen to kill him, instead of his victims.
Online Dating Turned Deadly
It is unclear what the agency was looking into, but the Snohomish sheriffâs office attempted at least two additional welfare checks on the children at DCFâs request. The agency eventually told both families that it intended to take custody of the Cordero children and bring them back to Massachusetts, where they might be split up in foster care. (A spokesperson declined to comment.) To keep the siblings together, the Corderos and Pences agreed to make the adoption permanent.
- Although many dark web sites are scams, Alexis knew someone out there wanted her dead.
- Chris had been looking into a network of dark web sites that claimed to offer hitmen for hire.
- Buchanan said court documents showed Wan accessed a dark web marketplace from his cell phone on April 18, 2022, while in the Northern District of Georgia.
- A few months later, when she told him she had a new boyfriend, she says he became angry.
- Unbeknown to its customers, the website is a scam by criminals â but the threat to the targets is real.
“Most people were stoic and calm during the calls,” said Miller. “It took them a while to let the message sink in. One of the women I spoke to was so unruffled by the news that she didnât even change her plans for the evening. She went to see her friend who lives right next to her estranged husband. “Itâs very unusual to step out of a normal role as a journalist,” said Miller. “There was a case in the U.K., a love triangle,” he explained. During his investigation, Miller also reached out to potential victims to tell them their private information â including workplace addresses and photographs â had been posted online. Even if a hitman-for-hire website turns out to be fake, the consequences for attempting to use it are very real.
- After they questioned him, Sharma agreed to an interview with us.
- 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.
- But is this terrifying narrative grounded in reality, or is it simply a sensational myth amplified by pop culture and Internet folklore?
- A few months into the arrangement with the Pences, Christina gave birth to a seventh child, and in Texas they told the children they were expecting an eighth.
His co-defendant, Abdoul Azika, previously pleaded guilty to carjacking on July 9, 2025. Murder for hire websites, it sounds chilling, but the harsh reality is theyâre out there. Of course, you canât just go on Google and find such websites freely. You wouldnât do it anyway, considering everything is tracked, especially through Google. 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.
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In February 2020, the anonymous scammer told the FBI in Washington state about a $5,000 order, saying, âI feel that all targets that have been paid for are in danger. Customers that pay to kill someone show that they are serious about killing that person,â according to a just-unsealed search warrant reviewed by Forbes. The tipster was not identified and itâs unclear if the FBI knows their real identity. Stephen Allwine was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Then, detectives discover something about the bitcoin used to pay for the hit in this case.
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When not neck-deep in the crypto news cycle, Anthonia spends her free time globetrotting and playing video games. The fee for the killing, said to be 10,000 euros, was to be paid from the inheritance left behind by the victim. Through his lawyer Tomi Borgenström, Halonen continues to deny his part in his fatherâs homicide, claiming to have been framed. A couple of the sites feature images of people who appear to have been killed in knife attacks or road accidents.
The Sometimes Terrifying, Sometimes Bewildering World Of Murder Marketplaces
In 2020, I was slingshotted into a desperate race against time to save the lives of people Iâd never met, from all over the world. Homeland Security Investigations conducted the investigation with the assistance of the Bedford, Euless, Grapevine, and Hurst Police Departments. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Weybrecht prosecuted the case. Blockchain analysis showed that Ms. Murphy used an ATM to convert cash into cryptocurrency on at least three occasions. On July 27, 2023, she transferred approximately 0.358 BTC ($10,510) to a Bitcoin wallet she believed belonged to the murder-for-hire recipient. Bottom line, reaching a hitman takes a bit of work to cover your tracks, but you do need to do it.
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“I need you to help me do some videos to prove the Besa Mafia legit, but WITHOUT killing anyone,” the operator wrote in one email, trying to get a contractor to produce lifelike videos. That doesn’t mean the sites aren’t involved in a very dark trade. They have become catch points for real people who are looking to pay to have someone murdered. And a number of men and women are sitting in jail after paying one of these sites â and getting caught by police. Experts and law enforcers who have studied these sites â almost all of them on the so-called dark web or dark net â say they are scams. âThe threat posed by so-called assassination markets is going to be pretty small in comparison to other things we deal with,â an NCA spokesperson told me. âWe arenât monitoring the website and there have been no arrests.
Of course, that could be down to the care of professional killers to not getting caught. Whilst there are many illegal activities occurring on the dark web, we believe hitmen-for-hire sites are mostly scams. 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. The dark web is known to harbor many sites that offer hitman services.
