In a growing panic, she called authorities, who later located and spoke with the van’s driver. She was convicted of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire on June 7, 2023. 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.
The Alleged Scammers Behind The Most Notorious Murder-for-Hire Site Have Been Arrested
When the five adopted children sent mail to their birth parents, the Pences wrote in a post-office box for a return address. The Corderos had made three cross-country trips to visit their children — twice in Washington, once in Texas — and knew they could not afford to keep doing so. But it unsettled Christopher and Michelle, who started to feel that the Corderos were using them to hide their children from the Massachusetts child-welfare system. Christopher later claimed that the Corderos asked if they could permanently park their trailer home on the Pences’ property. (Christina told me she had asked to park there only during sanctioned visits.) Eventually, the Corderos rented a space at Good Luck RV in Dallas, a two-hour drive from the Pences’ home in Hawkins.
This is why Monteiro is ambivalent about the news of Yura’s apparent apprehension, despite years of working to shed light on the operation and its victims. “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? The DIICOT says that the damages of the operation are believed to be around 500,000 euros, though if the scammers held onto the bitcoin they collected back in 2016, it would be worth far more than that today.
- The fee for the killing, said to be 10,000 euros, was to be paid from the inheritance left behind by the victim.
- The mission of the EDTF is to disrupt, dismantle or render ineffective organizations involved in the laundering of proceeds of narcotics trafficking and other financial crimes.
- “48 Hours” also tipped off detective Michael Ulrey in Clarksville, Tennessee, who broke the news to then 22-year-old Sydney Minor, a single mom.
- These operations often expose how widespread scams really are.
- The detectives follow her to a house and approach her in the driveway.
- An officer with the local department told her to come down to the station immediately.
“48 Hours” Disrupts Alleged Dark Web Hitmen In Potential Murder-for-hire Plots
From the outside, Tina Jones, 31, a registed nurse, and her husband Toby seemed to lead a fairy-tale life — at least according to social media. But less than two years into her marriage, investigators believe Tina’s eye began to wander, and settled on a colleague. She says she asked the detective if Brandon’s wife, Alexis, was part of the plot.
Georgia Doctor Pleads Guilty To Trying To Hire Hitman To Kill His Girlfriend On Dark Web
A similar sting led to the arrest and imprisonment of a Mississippi woman last year, when she paid $10,000 in Bitcoin to a purported hitman who turned out to be a federal law enforcement agent. Felkins told the Besa Mafia administrator in 2016 that she was in a position to benefit from her ex-husband’s death. “I stand to get his retirement, our house and possibly a large life insurance payout,” she said, according to the case’s complaint. Some Vendors will dark web hitmen only ship once coins have been released, please read the indicidual terms and conditions of the vendor first before purchase.
Is It Legal To Hire A Hitman On The Dark Web?
After little more than a year in Texas, the Pences were ready to leave. The eastern part of the state felt like something out of Exodus with extreme weather and scorpions in the bathtub. “Everything down there is trying to kill ya,” Christopher said. 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.
“48 Hours” Disrupts Alleged Dark Web Hitmen In Potential Murder-for-hire Plots
- Chris Monterio has had access to Yura’s database — he knows everything about Yura — and it’s time we ask him an important question.
- “People believed the site was real, and it isn’t,” Miller explained.
- If you are that curious, watch a video of a dark web surfer on Youtube.
- Laws have often taken time to catch up to technology, but in cases like these, that gap might be a literal matter of life and death.
- A few months later, when she told him she had a new boyfriend, she says he became angry.
- Zhou was not aware at the time of her scheme that the website was a scam operated by a third party and there was no actual hitman for hire.
These services can range from simple surveillance to complex assassination plots, and the prices can vary widely depending on the level of service required. 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. The aspiring horror book author had read about the dark web – a hidden online marketplace, where criminality ranging from human trafficking to illegal weapons is advertised for sale — even murder. On the dark web, someone using the alias Mastermind365 had gone to a hit man-for-hire site and paid about $5,000 worth of bitcoin for Alexis to be assassinated, giving chilling details.
The Concept Of A Hitman On The Dark Web
The music video he co-produced and appears in has more than two million views online. Brigham now has new people desperately wanting to see him, to find him — people with a badge who consider this talented artist a danger to society. Two months after the San Luis Obispo police got their tip from Chris Monteiro and “48 Hours,” cops finally have Laurie’s suspected tormentor in their sights. And just like in the Allwine case, the digital currency bitcoin is critical to proving a crime was committed.
Exploring The Dark Web: Hitman For Hire And The Realities Of Online Activities
In 2015, Monteiro started running the r/deepweb subreddit, a front row on the day-to-day happenings of the online netherworld. He documented his findings on his blog – pirate.london – and on online encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia and anti-pseudoscience website RationalWiki. He made it his mission to kill urban legends – he contributed to Wikipedia’s articles on the dark web and darknet market, and created RationalWiki’s pages about red rooms and runaway AIs. The day after, Toonbib started chasing the presumed capo for an answer, which took some more time to arrive. “I will assign an operative to your job and it will be done in about a week, is this ok?
FAQs About Dark Web Hitmen
Both stood to gain an inheritance, but police quickly eliminate Brandon Brigham as a suspect. But to prove him guilty, they somehow have to prove he is the one who sent the kill order on his stepmother to Yura’s hit man website. Dow immediately alerts San Luis Obispo police, including the supervisor of detectives, Lt. John Bledsoe. Justin Kmitch has been covering the story for The Daily Herald.
Without his scamming, some lives would have been at risk and some people plotting murders would still be around. 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. Yura’s greed, tenacity and SEO strategy had unwittingly created a tool to perceive the intentions of would-be criminals. His overall narrative of being a killer-baiter in shining armour doesn’t hold water. BRspd, the hacker who in 2016 twice broke into Besa Mafia’s website, told me over private chat that he had approached Yura about turning Besa Mafia into an actual honeypot for criminals. In March 2017, they arrested David Crichton, a British doctor who had ordered a hit on his former financial advisor.
What’s more, the eCommerce style setup, complete with shopping baskets, just makes things far too convenient for a would-be murder conspirator. The investigation, carried out by data-privacy and cybersecurity think-tank PrivacyAffairs, took a close look at a range of dark-web hitmen sites to compare the language, promises, and costs involved. 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 she’d learned to drive.
Someone using the alias “Blackjack85” had messaged Yura’s website in early February 2018 providing Sydney’s name, home address and other details. The man who apparently cornered the market in contract killings, sent “48 Hours” a video diary. As Allwine’s murder trial approached in January 2018, authorities were winding down their investigation. We wanted to learn more about the shadowy figure behind the Besa Mafia site. Back in Minnesota, police had been busy investigating Amy’s death since the day her body was discovered. They’d made an unusual find in the basement, where Stephen had an office.
Of course, due to the nature of unenforceable contracts, such guarantees are worthless. The sites are full of “trust signals” that are designed to make visitors feel like they are dealing with a legit website. Some sites mention they will not accept a hit on a minor, whereas others will but won’t carry out terror acts such as using explosives in a public place. We found that a lot of the sites just don’t feel trustworthy to begin with. There’s a level of desperation to look legit that gives it away.
