At least seven Dutch murders ordered on dark web hitman site: report
The murder of at least seven Dutch citizens has been ordered on a dark web site offering contract killings. In four cases, the murders were paid for, RTL Nieuws reports based on data obtained from a hack. The targets are ordinary people, including a civil servant, a teacher, and a nurse. As far as is known, none of the murders were committed, and all the clients were scammed by the people behind the website.
The contract killings were ordered between 2016 and 2022. RTL has data about 14 Dutch assassination orders, half of them concrete. The intended victims are not from organized crime groups and appear to live average lives. One teaches at a primary school, another works at a hospital, and another is a municipal official.
In four cases, the clients paid between €1,000 and almost €10,000 to have their target killed, often describing the murder with gruesome precision. “I want you to burn him alive and I want him to die,” one client wrote, adding that their target’s elderly mother lives in the same home. “All I want is for him to die; I don’t care what happens to the mother.”
Another customer gave precise instructions on when and where the target should be murdered. “I don’t want the child to be there when she’s shot dead. The child and the man are often gone for an hour and a half in the evening.”
Of the seven concrete murder-for-hire orders, one Dutch perpetrator has been arrested and convicted. Imran M., 42 from The Hague, was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2021 for twice trying to hire a contract killer to murder his ex-wife, the mother of his two children.
M. offered $4,000, paying half upfront. He described where his ex worked at a hospital, the make and color of her car, and her license plate. “The woman is an easy target and must be eliminated as quickly as possible. That’s why I’m offering a $500 bonus if it happens before next weekend.”
The woman and two children had to go into hiding for six months because it wasn’t clear whether someone would actually try to kill her.
According to RTL, a contract killing marketplace has existed on the dark web for years under various names and is still active. For a few thousand euros in bitcoin, you can hire a hitman anywhere in the world, the site claims. The site is a scam. The people behind it swindle users out of thousands of euros without actually hiring a hitman. Naturally, the scammed clients don’t go to the police.
The hacked data has been used to convict dozens of people for trying to hire a contract killer in nine different countries in recent years, the broadcaster wrote.
RTL Nieuws provided the data in its possession to the police, and several police units are investigating the perpetrators and victims. “We have already informed several victims, and we are still investigating the clients,” Thomas Aling of the police told the broadcaster. “We are doing everything we can to track down the suspects through the paid bitcoins, but that is sometimes quite complicated and takes time.”
“We take these matters very seriously because placing such an order is a criminal offense. We hope to be able to arrest suspects shortly who have given orders to have someone killed,” Aling said.
