Bitcoin is the preferred currency for drug smugglers, thieves, and criminals. The fact is, the benchmark cryptocurrency is 100% untraceable by anyone in every way imaginable. And because of this, people planning crimes use it all the time.
However, such atrocious deeds don’t always go unnoticed. A Wisconsin woman is facing federal charges after she tried to hire a hitman from a website to murder someone.
The U.S. Attorney’s office announced on Monday that Kelly Harper, 37, was charged with hiring someone on the internet to commit murder and paying for it in bitcoin. According to the prosecutors, the murder-for-hire scheme was uncovered by three journalists working on a report about a contract killing website.
The complaint reveals that Harper gave the supposed hitmen a clear description of the individual she wanted killed, information on where they worked, their personal cell phone number, and their car. She then went ahead and sent a screenshot of a bitcoin wallet holding over $5,630 in BTC to the admin of the dark web site as evidence that she could afford to pay for the murder.
After the journalists turned the information in to the local police, the FBI conducted a search at Harper’s home where they found screenshots of the murder-for-hire website. The FBI also discovered messages on December 3 where Harper was saying that the “target needs to be killed”.
Luckily, the authorities were able to intervene before the real murder was executed. Kelly Harper was taken into custody by the police during which she admitted to paying to have the intended victim murdered. If convicted, she could face a maximum sentence of 10 years.
