A creepy single guy in Beverly Hills ordered a murder, online, with BitCoin

Originally published at: A creepy single guy in Beverly Hills ordered a murder, online, with BitCoin | Boing Boing

2 Likes

I think the appropriate word is stronger than “creepy”. “Evil” maybe?

8 Likes

The group contacted a media outlet – which is not named in court documents – that in turn provided information to the FBI, such as messages, documentation of Bitcoin payments and information about the victim’s identity, location and her distinctive tattoo.

This is the perfect crime. No, not him hiring hitmen off the dark web with bitcoin - the people who advertised hit man services on the dark web, made off with $13k in bitcoin and then turned the guy in.

You can bet that the authorities are not terribly invested in recovering the bitcoin.

30 Likes

If only Berkett had used the blockchain to design his contract.

5 Likes

This new development pairs really well* with this other one. Just think of an adversary, and the deed is done!

*</sarcasm>

3 Likes

Amazing that I correctly guessed that the intended victim is a woman before even clicking on the story. /s

15 Likes

Good point. I now hope that most of the people going on the dark web for nefarious deeds are getting ripped off.

What is the crime if someone pays you to do something that is illegal and you take the money and don’t do it? Is it just plain theft?

1 Like
4 Likes

17 Likes

Except they’re going to get pummeled on their Yelp page, as they’ll have a ton of unhappy customers.

10 Likes

Did 13k seem an astoundingly low figure to anyone else?

I was expecting six figures at least

5 Likes

That is cheap to fix unless Yelp has raised their prices.

At 300 a month, 13k will go a long way.

4 Likes

You get what you pay for, even with assassins.

7 Likes

A libertarian nightmare.

1 Like

24 years old, white, male, hires a hitman; he sounds like a squeamish serial killer. Fortunately it looks like he’s been nipped in the bud.

6 Likes

Or lazy. “Kids these days” are coddled by the ease of ordering from the internet. Don’t want to say that Amazon/Grubhub/Doordash/Ebay etc saved a life, but…

4 Likes

My bet is they don’t have to recover the bitcoin - they already have it, because the whole “he paid a devious darknet group, who contacted an unnamed media organization, who contacted the FBI” thing is untrue - that he actually paid the FBI.

7 Likes

To which I raise my eyebrows in mild surprise and quietly adjust the mental slider on my internal ‘Living in Dystopia’ scale.

I mean, it’s an interesting comment on the times we live in - or my perception of them, at least - that what’s newsworthy about this is that it didn’t work. And you know, thank goodness. For as long as we’re in this place.

This is why you really don’t see professional hitmen working for people outside of organized crime. There is too much risk of either the client or the hitman turning in the other.

Organized criminals get commitment to the job when killing for hire, with implied threat the hitman will be killed by their employer if the job isn’t carried out.

I think we can be certain that the most of “the dark web” are really scams to separate digital currency from their owners.

The Internet!
Where men are men.
Where women and children are undercover FBI agents

1 Like