Hitman bitcoin contract foiled: woman loses $25,000
2 min readA British woman from a small town near Norwich wanted her co-worker murdered. report that local media. To do this, she hired an alleged assassin on the Darknet. The mother of five paid in Bitcoin. The transaction was now her undoing. Helen H. transferred the $25,000 from her verified Coinbase account. It didn’t come to an end. The alleged assassin made off with the Bitcoin. The authorities are now investigating the client.
It all began with a romance between Helen H. and her work colleague Paul B. However, the relationship came to an abrupt end and the British woman sought revenge. She searched for a hitman via the Tor browser and quickly found what she was looking for.
She then transferred $25,000 worth of Bitcoin along with the target’s name, home and work addresses, and a picture. “It’s important that it looks like an accident,” Hewlett said.
Because the police were tracking several Bitcoin payments on the dark web at the same time, they came across the British woman’s Coinbase account. Authorities posed as Helen H. and sent a message to the assassin asking him to cancel the job. However, the investigators did not receive the paid Bitcoin back. Thanks to Coinbase’s KYC data, officers were eventually able to identify and arrest Helen H. Investigations are currently underway.
Bitcoin hitman contract is a scam?
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the British woman looked around on several pages on the Darknet. A homepage finally convinced them with a “100 percent job completion rate”. However, investigators suspect fraud.
Due to its transparency, the blockchain is badly suited for illegal activities anyway. Transactions are saved and can always be viewed. Authorities use the information for investigative purposes to track criminal activities.
There are ways to disguise addresses using so-called crypto mixers. Using on-chain analysis, investigators can still match the transactions. It is of course even easier, as in the current case from Great Britain, when criminals use verified accounts.
