Imagine you get a call from a phone number you don't recognize. It's verified, so it's probably not a scam. Since you're not me (I never answer phone calls I don't recognize), you probably answer it. The person on the other line tells you that someone is trying to kill you.
What do you do?
The person calling you is named Carl Miller, and he's a journalist turned podcaster. He uncovered a dark website where you can pay a hitman to kill someone for you. For a pretty hefty fee. And the people who made requests weren't shy about handing over tens of thousands of dollars for this murder service. (Or is it Murdr? Our modern times have felt it necessary to wage war on the letter "e." Tumblr, Flickr, Scribd, Grindr, Crumbl, etc.)
A few years back a hacker got into the webpage and discovered an Excel spreadsheet with 175 targets on it. The people who request such services have to do their own research, so they add everything they can to that spreadsheet, not just the targets' names. The hitman needs photos, addresses, jobsites, writing samples, routines, etc., so if you want someone dead, you have to be serious about researching that person. The hitman takes only Bitcoin. And often times there are questions from the customers. To quote:
“How much bitcoin should I pay?” “Tell me the execution time in advance – I can’t be there.” “I would just like this person to be shot and killed. Where, how and what with does not bother me at all.” You get the idea.
It's pretty startling that it's so easy to kill someone without getting your hands dirty. There's just one problem for these murderous muses: the hitman doesn't exist. This guy, Yura, just takes your money and puts you off. When you ask why it hasn't been done yet, he's got a great list of excuses, as described here:
“In each case,” said Miller, “the hitmen got lost, they flew to the wrong place, they lost their gun, a new gun had to be acquired — in every case Yura was trying to get more money out of the user, saying things like, ‘We did not know the target is being protected, therefore we need a military-trained assassin, which will cost another $15,000’.
“As soon as people complained about the site not delivering murders, he would dump the brand and set up a new one, like a snake shedding its skin.” Yura even set up a hitman-for-hire “comparison” website, on which he warned users about scam sites and recommended others — namely, his — that he claimed achieved consistent results.
Yura is a sly man. Ultimately, when a paid-for hit doesn't happen, what is the customer going to do? Turn Yura over to the Better Business Bureau? It's an effective way to get tons of money pretty quickly.
But that's where the fun ends and where the true horror begins. What do you think someone who has paid a lot of money for a murder is going to do when said murder doesn't happen? That's 175 people who are gravely in danger. So Miller did the reasonable thing and started contacting people on the kill list and warning them that someone is out to murder them.
Say you get that call. What do you do?
So far Miller's actions have led to 32 convictions and have sent people to prison for a cumulative 150 years. Not bad for a journalist. See? Journalists are still important to our society.
If you want to get into some of the details on this news story, check out this article. It's one of the three I used in putting this column together. If, that is, you want some pretty sinister examples of the kill list and its failure to live up to its customers' expectations. It'll make you wonder if you've ever pissed off someone enough to seriously have you killed . . .
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