Behind the scenes of a CBS 48 Hours story on dark web hitmen
How I became a dark web consultant to a TV show, and my somewhat complicated relationship with the owner of the most profitable online murder-for-hire service in history I recently worked as a consultant to CBS for their season premiere of 48 Hours: “Click for a Killer” after I met a CBS producer at the trial […]
Murder, they wrote – freelancing for a dark web hitman
Dark web murder-for-hire organisation Besa Mafia never paid any of their would-be hitmen for burning cars for them. The only people paid were their army of freelance writers. Here’s what Besa Mafia had them do. Any freelancer knows that sometimes you have to take some pretty questionable jobs to put dinner on the table. This […]
Dark Web’s CrimeBay raising funds for a hit on Trump
CrimeBay, the new incarnation of Besa Mafia, has stepped up its marketing with a new attempt to extort money by crowdfunding a hit on the new US President. “Donald Trump is an extremely difficult target”, the site acknowledges, “however, he is neither a God nor immortal, and Crime Bay enjoys a challenge.”
So what’s been happening on the Dark Web?
The problem with writing a new book is that you save all the good stuff for the book and that leaves you with nothing for the blog. So in desperation, I’ve been clicking on random links from Onion crawlers to see if there’s anything new, relevant and/or even vaguely interesting happening in the deep dark web. […]
Ugly kids are cheaper – The Besa Files
Another story from the dark web “murder-for-hire” site hack. Read The Curious Case of Besa Mafia first. There are stories of people paying real money, verifiable through the blockchain, that have come out of the hack. Both targets and their would-be killers can be identified, so it’s only fair to leave those to the authorities for […]
The Little Texas Hit that Wasn’t
The hack of dark web “murder-for-hire” outfit Besa Mafia, which I wrote about a couple of days ago. has provided a treasure trove of stories of people who are prepared to go to extreme measures to be rid of someone in their lives. Most never got further than the initial enquiries. A few parted […]
Hitting on the Aussies – the Besa Mafia files
Before the recent hack confirmed definitively what rational people already knew – i.e. that the dark web “murder-for-hire” site was a scam – it was a little disconcerting that Besa Mafia’s No.1 FAQ was Do you have people in Australia? Now a thorough search of the leaked mails and orders has found no evidence that […]
The curious case of Besa Mafia
Disturbing revelations have come out of a dark web hire-a-hitman site Drugs, hacking services, stolen financial and personal information and fraud-related services are the staple products of the darknet markets. But there has always been websites offering far more sinister wares – poisons, human beings and hitmen. Such sites are overwhelmingly amateurish, poorly worded fakes, designed […]
Waiting in the Red Room
“There will be bacon” It started, as these things are wont to do, on 4Chan or Reddit. A couple of days ago; anonymous people posting anonymously “WHOA! Is this Real??” They gave no explanation, just an onion (i.e. dark web) link. The curious, of course, clicked. And they were greeted with a message: It went […]
Conversation with a hitman (or not)
Today the owner of Silk Road announced the closure of its sister site, the weapons-dealing Armory. The reason was not heat from law enforcement or negative press, it was simply that the site was not profitable and members complained that many listings were scams. There are dozens of black market sites selling all manner of […]