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 father’s homicide, claiming to have been framed. 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.
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The investigation discovered that one person was running multiple dark-web sites, and had a team of programmers and online marketers to create the perception that the organizations were genuine, trustworthy, and efficient. In a final effort to seem legit, each of the sites we found have a section of the website where ex-military personnel can sign up to join as a hitman. The prominent positioning of the link looks like another confidence trick. Our research led us to sites offering a wide range of violent services, with fees ranging from $5k to $200k. While many sites attempt to appear legitimate with guarantees, third-party escrow, and even “testimonials,” we found that most sites have a desperate and untrustworthy feel. “Her actions were the result of a breakdown of massive proportion,” attorney Jeff Whitt said, according to 10 News.
Keep your software up-to-date, use strong and unique passwords, and be cautious about clicking on suspicious links or downloading sketchy attachments. Scammers, cybercriminals, identity thieves – you name it, they’re out there. Remember, accessing the Dark Web isn’t a walk in the park.
Final Thoughts: Reality Vs Fiction
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.
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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. Justin Kmitch has been covering the story for The Daily Herald. 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.
“There is actual crime, but we are too busy talking about some guy who wants to kill his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend,” she said. When the first hit-man sites were discovered, an oft-repeated assumption was that the dark web was crawling with legitimate assassins waiting to kill on command. The paper, which is being reviewed for publication, is the first academic effort to illuminate what has been a subject of endless intrigue.
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At the center of Merchant’s article is a young woman who faced a likely threat on her life based on information found on the dark web; actually pursuing the case, however, proved more difficult. “Murder marketplaces may force us to reexamine — and redefine — what constitutes criminal intent,” Merchant writes. 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. The good news, so far, is that the presence of a market for the services of an assassin doesn’t actually mean that there are actual assassins involved. However, the leaked dataset reveals evidence the website is a scam set up to catch criminals or members of the public who are plotting murder. In one correspondence that appears to be between one admin and an FBI agent, it is confessed the website is a honeypot-style operation.
Sasser was arrested in June 2023 after a grand jury indicted her and charged her with using of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, according to a 2023 release. Sasser also requested that the killing appear “to seem random or accident. Or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation,” according to the release.
The Unbelievable Tale Of A Fake Hitman, A Kill List, A Darknet Vigilante And A Murder
Governments, corporations and law enforcement must act decisively — closing legal loopholes, enforcing stronger regulations and fostering global cooperation — or risk ceding control of cyberspace to an unregulated shadow industry. Some forms of cybersecurity work — like penetration testing, bug bounty programs and ethical hacking — are not just legal, they are essential to protecting digital infrastructure. Criminal hackers-for-hire operate without oversight, selling their skills to the highest bidder.
Ex-inmate Guilty Of Murdering Prison Guard Who Exposed Affair With Female Officer
The products that are most commonly listed for sale include drugs, fake documents, fraud-related items, and hacking services and tools. 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. One gray afternoon in November 2020, I’m on a video chat with my colleague Carl Miller, a technology researcher and author. We’re speaking to a woman from Switzerland, who I’ll call “Elena.” She’s middle-aged, with brown hair and glasses.
We simply list these links and don’t host, control, or endorse any content found on them. Your use of any linked site is entirely at your own risk. Many of these sites are designed to exploit the desperate, the gullible, or the criminally curious — offering nothing but empty threats and stolen funds in return. But is this terrifying narrative grounded in reality, or is it simply a sensational myth amplified by pop culture and Internet folklore? In this article, we dig into the chilling rumors, the real facts, and what these myths reveal about our relationship with anonymity, crime, and the darker corners of the Internet. Checkout Trends.co to access exclusive research and connect with business builders from around the globe.
It’s like the rebellious cousin of the internet we all know and love. Are hitmen real on the Dark Web, or is it just an urban legend cooked up to keep us up at night? Let’s dive into this chilling topic and separate fact from fiction.
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. Van Sant and “48 Hours” investigate the alleged plot to kill and go on a global hunt to track Yura — the so-called mastermind behind murder-for-hire sites, whose identity and location are unknown. 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.
- A Bedford woman who attempted to hire a hitman to kill her boyfriend’s lover was sentenced today to nine years in federal prison, announced U.S.
- One organization blocked them from adopting a group of five siblings because the Pences already had children of similar ages — not optimal, in the agency’s view.
- A Utah man has been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for hiring a hitman to kill his adopted children’s biological parents, officials announced last week.
- These legitimate cybersecurity professionals operate within strict legal and ethical guidelines, often with government contracts and regulatory oversight.
- They were about to take a drive, maybe get some food, when Stern’s phone buzzed.
Recently, there have been several reports of individuals who have been either arrested or convicted for attempting to hire or apply to be a hitman online to end someone else’s life. Major takedowns like Silk Road, AlphaBay, and Hansa have shown that even the most “secure” criminal platforms can be infiltrated. These operations often expose how widespread scams really are. But none of the 24 sites covered in the research have ever been linked to a real-life murder.
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. And whether it’s enough to shut down the operation for good is an open matter; it is easy enough for another to keep running the scam. Furthermore, there are still thousands of people who have contacted Yura about hiring a hitman, and submitting the name of a person they want dead. While they have been known to exist in the past, the vast majority of these sites are either scams to steal bitcoin from someone who probably would be reluctant to report it or ongoing stings by law enforcement.
