How a Fake Murder-For-Hire Site Led To Real Convictions (harpers.org) 38
Harper's profiles sys-admin Chris Monteiro, who moonlights as a white-hat hacker monitoring dark web sites claiming to offer murder-for-hire services. For example, he tipped off one local police department to a $5,000 bitcoin payment someone made to try to arrange the murder of a teenaged girl on a site run by someone named "Yura".
[U]sers set up an anonymous account, select from a drop-down menu the kind of violence they would like inflicted, upload the photo and address of their intended target, and wait to hear back through the messaging system. Users often have questions for Yura: How do I know you're for real? Can you make it look like an accident? When they are satisfied, the user transfers bitcoin into a special wallet on the site, where it will ostensibly be held until the job is completed. Instead, Yura takes the money immediately, and makes no attempt to complete the job. The user complains; Yura says he needs more money to hire a better hit man; the user either pays again or asks for a refund; and Yura either disappears or attempts to extort the user by threatening to turn information over to the authorities...
Despite the repulsive intent, there's an element of black comedy to some of the logs from Yura's sites. For one thing, the users' eagerness to believe the service is real leads them to ignore obvious signs that they are being scammed. Yura's marketplaces, for example, use stock photos of assassins or photos pulled from Google image searches. His poor English and poorer knowledge of U.S. geography result in glaring slipups, and the language he employs can make him sound like a customer service representative channeling a B-grade Mafia film. During the back-and-forth on one recent order, the user Happynewyear asked Yura if he could send hit men to Hawaii. "Yes," Yura responded, "we have someone in a nearby state. He can drive to the location with a stolen car and do the job with no problems." Overlooking the fact that the nearest state is 2,500 miles and a considerable swath of the Pacific Ocean away, the user paid him around three thousand dollars.
Reading through the kill orders, it's easy to spot the online disinhibition effect -- the psychologist John Suler's theory of why and how human behavior changes when we log on... So far, according to Monteiro, eight people have been arrested for ordering murders through Yura's websites, on the basis of evidence Monteiro passed to law enforcement. One of them, a young Californian named Beau Brigham, had paid less than $5 toward a hit on his stepmother. Nevertheless, he was found guilty of soliciting murder and sentenced to three years in prison.
One attempted murder was arranged by a man described as "an I.T. professional and elder in the United Church of God," raising an adopted teenaged son with his wife Amy. "[H]e'd been arranging affairs through the infidelity website Ashley Madison but could not consider divorce because of his position in the church." In the end he'd simply carried out the murder himself, but "His exchanges with Yura would prove central to the state's investigation into Amy's death: the bitcoin signature of the payment...matched the key that authorities found on Stephen's hard drive at home. Stephen had attempted to make the death look like a suicide, and the bitcoin key was proof it was not. In January 2018, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison."
The article's author, Brian Merchant, writes that it was hard to research. "There is no easy way to say, 'Hello, I found your name on a kill list on the dark net, and while the site is a scam the order is not; someone you likely know wants you dead badly enough to pay thousands of dollars to an impossibly shady website. Give me a ring back anytime'... Of those I was able to contact, about half said they had never been alerted by the police." (Though Monteiro says America's Department of Homeland Services now plans to investigate everyone who's made transactions on Yura's site.)
The article also notes the first known instance of a murder ordered on the dark web and then successfully carried out -- this March, on a different dark web site.
Despite the repulsive intent, there's an element of black comedy to some of the logs from Yura's sites. For one thing, the users' eagerness to believe the service is real leads them to ignore obvious signs that they are being scammed. Yura's marketplaces, for example, use stock photos of assassins or photos pulled from Google image searches. His poor English and poorer knowledge of U.S. geography result in glaring slipups, and the language he employs can make him sound like a customer service representative channeling a B-grade Mafia film. During the back-and-forth on one recent order, the user Happynewyear asked Yura if he could send hit men to Hawaii. "Yes," Yura responded, "we have someone in a nearby state. He can drive to the location with a stolen car and do the job with no problems." Overlooking the fact that the nearest state is 2,500 miles and a considerable swath of the Pacific Ocean away, the user paid him around three thousand dollars.
Reading through the kill orders, it's easy to spot the online disinhibition effect -- the psychologist John Suler's theory of why and how human behavior changes when we log on... So far, according to Monteiro, eight people have been arrested for ordering murders through Yura's websites, on the basis of evidence Monteiro passed to law enforcement. One of them, a young Californian named Beau Brigham, had paid less than $5 toward a hit on his stepmother. Nevertheless, he was found guilty of soliciting murder and sentenced to three years in prison.
One attempted murder was arranged by a man described as "an I.T. professional and elder in the United Church of God," raising an adopted teenaged son with his wife Amy. "[H]e'd been arranging affairs through the infidelity website Ashley Madison but could not consider divorce because of his position in the church." In the end he'd simply carried out the murder himself, but "His exchanges with Yura would prove central to the state's investigation into Amy's death: the bitcoin signature of the payment...matched the key that authorities found on Stephen's hard drive at home. Stephen had attempted to make the death look like a suicide, and the bitcoin key was proof it was not. In January 2018, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison."
The article's author, Brian Merchant, writes that it was hard to research. "There is no easy way to say, 'Hello, I found your name on a kill list on the dark net, and while the site is a scam the order is not; someone you likely know wants you dead badly enough to pay thousands of dollars to an impossibly shady website. Give me a ring back anytime'... Of those I was able to contact, about half said they had never been alerted by the police." (Though Monteiro says America's Department of Homeland Services now plans to investigate everyone who's made transactions on Yura's site.)
The article also notes the first known instance of a murder ordered on the dark web and then successfully carried out -- this March, on a different dark web site.
hmmm. (Score:3)
How much for infamous /. spammers?
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What infamous /. spammers? I blocked them all permanently a long time ago. It's super easy to do. All you need is a text editor. Simply go and edit your operating system's hosts file. The hosts file is surely the only way to block them. It is 100% effective. You'll never see a spam post again. Simply add them to your HOSTS file. Other ways of blocking them is ineffectual, only the HOSTS file blocks them at the lowest level.
Immunity for perjury (Score:5, Interesting)
When Chris Monteiro was asked to testify in the trial of one of the people he accused, he agreed to do so only if he was granted immunity from perjury. The judge approved the request, basically giving him permission to lie under oath with no consequences.
He is also a convicted child pornographer. And he has stated that a website to fund political assassinations is a good idea.
People are going to prison based on this guy's accusations.
Re:Immunity for perjury (Score:5, Interesting)
Just in case anyone wants a citation: Chris Monteiro given immunity for perjury [calcoasttimes.com]. He admitted under oath (ha ha) that he is a convicted child pornographer.
He has no credentials and no formal training in computer security. He has admitted to illegally hacking websites.
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And also technically committed fraud or entrapment, offering to provide a service he had no intention of actually providing and accepting payment.
Probably neither (Score:5, Interesting)
If someone working on behalf of the government had reached out to the defendant and said "I can kill your wife for $5,000â, that would be entrapment. The government, or their agent, would be the one who brought up the idea of that specific person commiting a specific crime.
If he sets up a dark web site and posts a link within a murder-for-hire forum, then the defendant goes looking for a murder-for-hire forum, clicks the link to the murder-for-hire site, fills out a form and asks him to commit a specific murder, that's probably not entrapment because the defendant was actively looking for a way to commit the crime.
As to fraud, there are various fraud-related crimes; just generic "fraud" is a tort. It's not actionable where the purpose of the contract is unlawful on its face. That's good news for anyone who discussed commiting a crime and now has second thoughts - it's perfectly legal to back out of an agreement to commit crime.
He may have committed wire fraud. I'd have to check the defenses to wire fraud in the statute and case law, and consider the international law implications.
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I am not a lawyer, but I think you may well be wrong. It's incredibly hard to prove entrapment.
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You are more than welcome to point to any cases or statues. I enjoy discussing this stuff. I would point out Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 548 (1992) and Mathews v. United States.
The two come at it from different directions, so the line is where the two cases meet. Jacobson held that entrapment involves the police *inducing* the crime, as opposed to merely presenting the opportunity (such as an unsecured object that can be stolen - bait). Mathews pointed "predisposition" - distinguishing betwe
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You use words here in this response that are good, but you didn't have those words included in your statements above.
Your quoted example above is just shit, that doesn't describe entrapment it describes a typical investigation. Offering to do it isn't an inducement. A normal, non-criminal person doesn't say yes to murder-for-hire, because they don't even want murder to be something that happens. To be entrapment, they'd have to not want to murder in the beginning, but get talked into it. That's just really
Suggestion - read what you cite (Score:2)
> In Mathews v. United States we have a ruling about jury instructions where they found that the defendant doesn't have to consistently argue that they committed the crime in order to ask for a jury instruction to consider entrapment; they can argue that they didn't commit the crime, but that if they did it was entrapment. That's it. You cited it without even reading a summary.
I see you glanced over the first half of the syllabus. When arguing about a case it might be a really good idea to actually read
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If someone working on behalf of the government had reached out to the defendant and said "I can kill your wife for $5,000Ã, that would be entrapment. The government, or their agent, would be the one who brought up the idea of that specific person commiting a specific crime.
For it to be entrapment, there would have to be more. Nobody will pay to get their wife killed just because someone brings up the idea - they would only do that if they had wanted to kill the wife all along.
You would have to do a lot more. Like tell you that your wife has just inherited 3 million dollars from her parents that would be yours if she died. Then introduce you to a woman who has great sex with you but tells you that this will only happen again if you have lots of money. And then someone tells
An offer alone isn't inducement (but jurors decide (Score:2)
It's true a single offer, by itself, isn't inducement. Where exactly the line is drawn varies with different cases. It's not entirely consistent. For example, MULTIPLE offers, an offer repeated several times, was ruled entrapment by SCOTUS (Jacobson v US).
Note that inducement is a fact for the jury to decide*, not a matter of law for the judge, so those who make the finding have not studied precedent on the issue.
* If there is a jury
Re:Immunity for perjury (Score:5, Informative)
And also technically committed fraud or entrapment
No, he infiltrated scam hitman-for-hire sites and downloaded their chat logs. He did not run the sites himself.
Thanks and the cite says any crimes (Score:2)
Thanks for the cite. I was going to ask.
The story says he asked for immunity for any crimes related to these activities, and "any crimes" includes perjury. It's not at all surprising he wanted immunity - he could easily be accused of committing some type of crime. He would be foolish to list off only certain statutes he wanted immunity from. "Any crimes related" seems perfectly reasonable to me.
$5k for murder? (Score:1)
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Is this a discount service or is the world this cheap?
It is amazing that any of these idiots thought they could hire a real murderer for $5k. All on-line murder for hire sites are fake. Anyone visiting these sites is either talking to a scammer or a cop.
Re:$5k for murder? (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA says you're wrong:
The article also notes the first known instance of a murder ordered on the dark web and then successfully carried out -- this March, on a different dark web site.
While most likely are fake, at least one appears to be legit.
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P1 = likelyhood(caught, realMurder)
P2 = likelyhood(scam)
P3 = likelyhood(caught, scam)
Evaluate(P1,P2*P3).
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While most likely are fake, at least one appears to be legit.
The philosophical term is, "the exception that proves the rule."
When you can only find one example, and it is believed to be the only one in existence, you're only up to 1/infinity, which isn't really very much. Even if you got to one in a million it would be still be "the exception that proves the rule."
exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis
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Is this a discount service or is the world this cheap?
Nearly half the world's population live on less than $2000 a year [worldbank.org] so $5k is 2-3 years salary. I also suspect the general crime level matters a lot, like how much would a murder actually get investigated.
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Crackheads would beat their own mother for $20.
Nice method (Score:3)
That way you can get all the morons and since it's not the police doing it, it's not entrapment either.
Re:Nice method (Score:5, Informative)
That way you can get all the morons and since it's not the police doing it, it's not entrapment either.
It would not be entrapment even if done by the police. Entrapment is when the police lure you into committing a crime you were not otherwise predisposed to commit. That is not the case here. These people sought out the site of their own volition and initiated contact.
I agree that these sites, whether run by scammers or cops, are providing a public service and should not be shut down. They help would-be-murders self identify themselves while depriving them of money and time. All good.
Maybe I'm just old (Score:2)
but there used to be a bar I got laid at a lot, where someone told me the bartender could "arrange" a hit for $500 if you needed some "Marital Counseling"...
Scamming people as a fake hitman is legal!?!? (Score:2)
OMG what have I been doing wasting my life with this "work" bullshit!?
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After reading more carefully I see that he's infiltrating black hat websites to get this information, not hosting the websites himself. That's morning reading for you...
How could this possibly work (Score:2)
If you are dealing with real people in organized crime, I can imagine that murder for hire could work - the organization's reputation is at stake. Anonymous, and on line? How can a reputation be developed? Reviews from other users???? Yelp? Its not like the murder-for-hire guy can provide a list of satisfied customers.
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Why pay someone else? (Score:2)
Stop The Presses! Ashley_Madison Actually worked! (Score:2)
One attempted murder was arranged by a man described as "an I.T. professional and elder in the United Church of God," raising an adopted teenaged son with his wife Amy. "[H]e'd been arranging affairs through the infidelity website Ashley Madison but could not consider divorce because of his position in the church." In the end he'd simply carried out the murder himself, but "His exchanges with Yura would prove central to the state's investigation into Amy's death: the bitcoin signature of the payment...matched the key that authorities found on Stephen's hard drive at home. Stephen had attempted to make the death look like a suicide, and the bitcoin key was proof it was not. In January 2018, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison."
This may very well be the only guy it worked for, and here he is ordering a hit.forget the whole hit-man and elder in his church thing. The thing I am amazed by is that Ashley-Madison actually worked!