Jesus that was crazy to read...this guy is doing god’s work “There is just one reason that a local police department in Minnesota was aware that someone had paid an obscure site on the dark web to have one of its teenage residents killed, and that reason is Chris Monteiro. Monteiro, a systems administrator who runs I.T. security for a midsize firm in London, spends his nights as a white-hat hacker and independent cybercrime researcher, navigating the shadowy spaces of the dark web. Murder marketplaces have in recent years become both his signature area of expertise and his exhausting burden”<p>Imagine you can pay in bitcoin where AI drone and carry out the hit...all anonymous
Since this kind of scam "murder for hire" site has been around the dark web for a while and apparently, there are people dumb enough to pay them something, one would hope that various law enforcement agencies have set up fake sites and are harvesting erstwhile 'clients'.<p>However, based on the article, there's an apparent lack of law enforcement interest due to jurisdictional challenges. Perhaps it's also harder to get govt funding for something as 'routine' as attempted murder vs headline fodder like pedos.<p>I imagine there might be an opportunity for a reality TV producer to create a "To Catch a Murderer" show along the lines of "To Catch a Predator." Once they have a real 'client', they could let the client know a date and time for which they'll need an alibi and then suggest a nearby location that has video surveillance by which the would-be client can establish their presence.<p>That creates an oppty for the host of the show to approach the client at the alibi location, ostensibly to return the client's money because there are 'problems' with the hit. The ensuing conversation would likely lead to some high ratings as well as broadcast-quality, multi-angle indictment evidence.
> In June 2018, news came of a second death from the kill list. Twenty-one-year-old Bryan Njoroge was found dead in Indiana, shot in the head on a baseball field. The police ruled the death a suicide. Weeks earlier, a user with the alias Toonbib had paid around $5,500 to order his murder and provided details of his upcoming travel. Njoroge was a U.S. military serviceman who, before he died, had made a female friend the beneficiary of his life-insurance policy. His father questions whether the death was a suicide, but the local police department has said that it is aware of the dark-web assassination order and stands by its conclusion.<p>It's possible that the police know something the father does not. I would not put it past a suicidal person to order a hit on himself.
>Now it’s easy to purchase bitcoins on any number of mainstream markets and “tumble” them so that their point of purchase is obscured. Similarly, thanks to Tor, accessing the dark web requires only opening a browser and enduring slower download speeds.<p>lol has the author tried buying bitcoins and then tumbling them? I would not call submitting tons of ID to buy and withdrawal $5000 of bitcoin and then setting up tor and getting a tumbler working to be easy, and not getting scammed in the process. Also tor and tumblers are not necessarily fully anonymous.
I've read another article related to this about a year ago:<p>"The unbelievable tale of a fake hitman, a kill list, a darknet vigilante... and a murder": <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/kill-list-dark-web-hitmen" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.co.uk/article/kill-list-dark-web-hitmen</a><p>HN discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18767657" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18767657</a>
This was a really interesting and worthwhile read despite the two pop ups.<p>The Beau Brigham case mentioned is sad[0]...guy seems to have been given a shit lot in life (bedridden with illness for 5 years), payed a token $3.50 for an assassination attempt on his stepmother, then received 3 years in jail. No one should allow their frustrations to build up to actionable murderous intent but you I can't help feel for the guy to some extent. 3 years in jail is probably not the sort of help he needed.<p>That article also mentions how Monteiro is a registered sex offender related to child pornography. This article[1] goes in to more detail, stating that Monteiro had "58 images of child pornography on his computer, most of which he created" and that "he committed illegal acts in order to access content on the dark web. Monteiro said he compromised and shut down websites while obtaining information about the case". Seems like these child porn sites require users to generate content to gain and maintain access.<p>Hard to tell from the testimony the intent and extent of good or harm Monteiro did around the child porn stuff. There should really be more published details around the sex offender registry - did someone swap nudes with their underage girlfriend or actively film abuse of their kids? There is a massive difference.<p>Regardless, Monteiro is doing awesome work around the murder for hire business. Really tricky field to navigate, and seemingly quite taxing and unrewarding. He published this cool public data on murder for hire statistics here [2]<p>[0] <a href="https://calcoasttimes.com/2019/08/15/jury-finds-beau-brigham-guilty-of-trying-to-hire-a-hitman/" rel="nofollow">https://calcoasttimes.com/2019/08/15/jury-finds-beau-brigham...</a>
[1] <a href="https://calcoasttimes.com/2019/07/31/key-witness-in-slo-murder-for-hire-trial-admits-to-being-sex-offender/" rel="nofollow">https://calcoasttimes.com/2019/07/31/key-witness-in-slo-murd...</a>
[2] <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AICLS8bS6Kh4GgRTWkSfBe96cKHWwf8EPYiFc3pcgMY/edit#gid=0" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AICLS8bS6Kh4GgRTWkSf...</a>
The Wired article on the original Silk Road back in 2012 was responsible for driving a huge amount of traffic to the site. Harper's has a smaller readership than Wired and fewer people are interested in pursuing hits than getting high (hopefully), so maybe that won't happen here, but I worry that the article will put these forums on people's radars. Thankfully the clearnet sites that track darknet .onion addresses usually avoid having sites like these listed.
So while I don't really participate in cryptocurrencies anymore I have a basic knowledge of how it all works and have read up on ETH contracts. Couldn't someone create a contract on the ETH network (my terminology might be off) that allows you send a message to contract with a name (maybe more PII), a date, and some amount of ETH to create the system Jim Bell hypothesized?<p>Obviously a big issue would be "death confirmation" as is how do we know X person is actually dead so we can pay out to the "winner"? I imagine it could be done through some kind of majority system but what incentive would other "donators"/"would be killers" have to confirm a death has happened if they aren't the beneficiary? I'm sure someone clever could think of some way to do it...
><i>Her father gave her a pocketknife, and her boyfriend gave her a bigger knife to carry in her purse.</i><p>Stories like make me appreciate that someone can purchase and conceal a small firearm (in most cities). All things unequal, a person with a gun is always extremely dangerous.<p>The police, after all, have no actual legal requirement to protect you[1] — and never forget that.<p>1. <a href="https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-you-federal-court-affirms-yet-again" rel="nofollow">https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...</a>
Interesting Story. Nice of the journalist to forewarn the suspect so any proof can be destroyed.<p>Suspect on linkedin I see.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-fry-366693b2/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-fry-366693b2/</a>
You'd think it'd cost more money to kill someone. You'd have to pay insurance for the assassin. If something went wrong you'd need to pay the costs of taking care of the assassin's family. Whole lotta trouble.
Makes be think of slaughterbots based on some comments and concepts touched on here<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw</a>
I thought this might be about a viral facebook post that said something like "click here and a <something> will die" and how many people clicked.
Potentially unpopular opinion: This is one of the reasons why we as a society can't afford to allow untraceable electronic money transactions.<p>Imagine the combination of perfectly untraceable money transactions with actual working low-cost swarms of facial recognition-based killbots/drones.<p>That's what, maybe 5-7 years away from now?<p>The risk here is that the cost of a hit could go down to very low costs, say between $1k to $10k per hit/murder. If it goes that low we're screwed as a society, especially if the transactions aren't traceable.
Hard to not come away from this article with a sense that the FBI and other law enforcement organizations are simply incapable and unwilling to do their jobs.<p>For example, this sentence: "The FBI has a mandate to pursue only those crimes that violate a federal statute." Sorry, but how can a crime over the Internet like this NOT violate federal statutes? It's impossible. By definition all these crimes would be pursued at the federal level.<p>Then there's the description of the interview where they interviewed the husband and wife together despite the husband being the main suspect. That's like pulling the plug on your server and wondering why the website's down. Beyond incredibly stupid to the point where it's hard to believe that actually happened. Those agents should themselves be charged for facilitating that murder.<p>I won't bother to go into the failing of allowing the identification of the British guy who placed the hit either by not allowing his ex-gf to read his messages. How dumb are these fucking cops?<p>The whole piece reads like a story of police, FBI, and law enforcement failings at every level. It's practically guaranteed that hits are taking place online and this is law enforcement's response? Making things worse or at the very best, fucking up investigations with their extreme stupidity.
so this 'journalist' Brian Merchant has not been able to prove shit, but he felt comfortable enough to dox someone, full name, and accuse him of being a murderer based on 1. his ex's suspicions and 2. the fact that he refused to give an interview?<p>I suppose before you do this sort of thing you make very sure that your target is not rich enough to sue you for defamation.
>After a few minutes, Monteiro succeeded in hacking into the site with stolen administrator codes and installing an automated script that scraped the entire site every three hours and dumped the data on his server.<p>Ugh, fuck off. I think the big question here, the one that should be at the top of the article, is "Has a hit ever been purchased and carried out via darkweb sites", and the answer is "obviously not, lol".