Hi all
I've been hanging around the rationalist-sphere for many years now, mostly writing about transhumanism, until things started to change in 2016 after my Wikipedia writing habit shifted from writing up cybercrime topics, through to actively debunking the numerous dark web urban legends.
After breaking into what I believe to be the most successful ever fake murder for hire website ever created on the dark web, I was able to capture information about people trying to kill people all around the world, often paying tens of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin in the process.
My attempts during this period to take my information to the authorities were mostly unsuccessful, when in late 2016 on of the site a user took matters into his own hands, after paying $15,000 for a hit that never happened, killed his wife himself.
Due to my overt battle with the site administrator over this period, he grew frustrated with me, and when sending death threats and burning cars to dissuade me failed to work, it was ultimately commissioning blogs implicating me running the site that means following the murder, the police broke down my door and arrested me for allegedly running the site. I handed over my info and they obviously let me go.
In 2018 participating in a CBS documentary about the 'dark web murder', I accessed the site once again, instigating a handful of arrests in the US and Singapore, and leading to a short-lived relationship with Homeland Security Investigations and precipitating further arrests in the US.
From 2020 until recently I worked with a UK podcast company, with me funneling off the most serious murder plots and they would try and send them to local journalists and law enforcement agencies around the world, with the most successes being in the US. You can listen to 'Kill List' online.
As of 2025 now, this has lead to almost 40 convictions around the world, further more arrests and likely more in the pipeline.
With the podcast production ended, I am exhausted from these efforts. I have scraped sites, triaged records, verified addresses, cross referenced IDs, reconstructed bitcoin payments, automated reports, worked with journalists, many law enforcement agencies, private detectices and incurred both legal fees and the personal and professional opportunity-cost for the significant time and focus I have spent on this over almost 9 years now.
I have about 800 names left on the Kill List, and the financial logistics of investigating them both into developed and developing would appear insurmountable to overcome.
More people on the list I know have been brutally murdered, or died in suspicious circumstances, all because there is no international body to handle such cases effectively, unlike if I were investigating for example drug trafficking or terrorism. More people still have been murdered but I just don't know it yet, and more still will be.
This experience has been mentally and socially taxing, with even close friends unwilling or able to expose themselves to these harrowing murder plots, featuring detailed information about how, why and where people should be killed, likely knowing this information would be harmful to them, both emotionally, and the practical impact of being obligated to taking action like I have.
I have recently put up a donations link in case anyone might sponsor my further investigations, as the absence of a strong call to action from the recent podcast has left the incorrect impression that information has been disseminated to the relevant authorities and that it's in good hands.
It's not in good hands, it's just in mine, a chronically ill IT geek who is tired of doing this. And yet I remain the only person with this information that I can't ethically dump on the internet.
Any suggestions?
It varies depending on how powerful the law enforcement agency is and whether they understand it or not, with the FBI and German Federal police being the most effective.
It's not all saving lives, often it's protecting people from stalking, physical and mental abuse, child custody disputes and the like, because in many cases (especially so with women perpetrators) they would never actually turn to violence themselves.
I have not been party to all of the journalist hard costs for local investigators, but I think they were doing at least $3,000 initially per major case, but they would go higher when it looked like this would turn into a full podcast episode. There is also a issue where cases without payment are considered less serious than those with by the police, and require more up front investigation to understand. As a result, far more of the 'payer' cases were investigated compared to the non-payer ones, at least in the US.
Sometimes such as in the US the police would then move fast, but in places like Spain the journalist had to act as a victim advocate extensively for years, and in Italy the cases collapsed on technicalities.
Frankly, beyond my personal experience, I REALLY don't want to live in a world where people can order commodity killings anonymously, as my data shows that all sorts of people would. I consider this analogous to the psychological effect that terrorism has on society, despite not being a high source of actually violence relatively speaking.
But yeah, murder is bad actually and should be given higher priority than other causes of death in my opinion.