The dark web’s reputation as the lawless corner of the internet where anything from drugs, guns and even hit men can be bought has become modern urban legend.Recently released court documents reveal how one dark web broker claiming to offer murder-for-hire was a scammer acting as an FBI informant.
In February 2020, the anonymous scammer told the FBI in Washington state about a $5,000 order, saying, “I 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,” according to a just-unsealed search warrant reviewed by Forbes .They then offered to provide “target information, payments evidence and other information to trace the customers.” While customers didn’t provide their real name or details, and hid their IP address, they could still be tracked, the informant said.The tipster was not identified and it’s unclear if the FBI knows their real identity.
According to the warrant, the site administrator told the agents about one order for which he’d been sent the target’s address in Bellevue, Washington, and had received a message from the buyer, which read, “Just kill her ASAP.
I don’t care how just make sure she’s dead.I’d prefer if you shoot her in the head.
She works in [corporation] in Bellevue but I don’t know where exactly.
I don’t know if that helps you in someway.She has a three-years-old son that she picks him up at 5 P.M.so she usually gets home around 5-ish.Please don’t do anything to the boy …Send me a proof when the job’s done.” A payment of 0.53 bitcoin (worth around $5,000 at the time) was made to the tipster’s wallet on February 4, 2020, law enforcement said.
When the FBI identified the target, who has not been named, agents interviewed her to determine who could have wanted her dead, the agency wrote in its warrant.The agency said it learned her husband had an extramarital affair with a woman he’d met at a conference.He’d not only been having an affair with the woman, but also was giving her money, and on one occasion she’d asked for $5,000.
In the search warrant issued for Microsoft and Gmail email accounts, the husband’s new partner was identified as the main suspect and admitted to investigators that she had booked the dark web hit.
Forbes is not publishing the suspect’s name because no charges have been filed yet.
According to the interview relayed in the search warrant, the suspect said she used an “old phone” to solicit the hit and had downloaded an app on her phone, believed to be the Tor browser, to hide her identity.She said that she’d tried to stop the hit, but couldn’t do so because she couldn’t access the site after she’d made the order, the FBI wrote.
Prior to her being interviewed, in December 2019 the suspect had paid a visit to the victim’s home and told the husband she had planned to murder the wife with a knife, though she told agents she hadn’t meant it and had not been armed, the FBI said, learning the information from interviews.
The wife had also been sent photos over Facebook showing the husband and the suspect kissing, believed to have been orchestrated by the suspect, according to the search warrant.
After she’d made the decision to order a hit man, the suspect said she used a bitcoin ATM and visited various dark web hit-for-hire sites, choosing one that didn’t ask for identifying information like a driving license, the government wrote.She complained to the dark web broker why the hit hadn’t occurred, to which the informant replied the hit man who had been hired was arrested and they were trying to find another person to do the job, according to the warrant.
The FBI said the informant had tipped it off about another kill order, but no details were provided.
Often murder-for-hire dark web sites have been proven to be scams .But last year, Europol said an Italian man paid a dark web hit man $12,000 in cryptocurrency to assault an ex-girlfriend with acid and to put her in a wheelchair.It managed to trace the payment and prevent the attack after launching “an urgent, complex crypto-analysis to enable the tracing and identification of the provider.”
Thomas Brewster
I’m associate editor for Forbes, covering security, surveillance and privacy.I’m also the editor of The Wiretap newsletter, which has exclusive stories on real-world
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I’m associate editor for Forbes, covering security, surveillance and privacy.I’m also the editor of The Wiretap newsletter, which has exclusive stories on real-world surveillance and all the biggest cybersecurity stories of the week.It goes out every Monday and you can sign up here: https://www.forbes.com/newsletter/thewiretap
I’ve been breaking news and writing features on these topics for major publications since 2010.As a freelancer, I worked for The Guardian, Vice, Wired and the BBC, amongst many others.
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