Generic police lights and yellow police tape at crime scene.Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto
According to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office Middle District of Tennessee, Josiah Ernesto Garcia has been charged with use of interstate facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.
Attorney information for Garcia was not immediately available and it’s unclear if he entered a plea to the charge.
He then came across theparody website, RentAHitman.com, which advertises fake hitman services. The website also provides fake intake forms where people can request services or apply to be a hitman.
Garcia allegedly told the site administrator he wanted to get to work as soon as possible, prompting an undercover FBI agent posing as an interested party to get involved.
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Once a fake job opened up, Garcia allegedly agreed to meet with the undercover agent at a Hendersonville, Tenn., park, with the promise of a $5000 payment, say authorities.
During the meeting, Garcia allegedly received photographs, fake information about the intended target, and a $2500 down payment. He allegedly asked if a photo of the dead body was required to secure the remainder of the fee before he was arrested.
If convicted, Garcia faces up to 10 years in prison.
‘Nobody Could Be Stupid Enough… Right?’
In 2022, Bob Innes, the founder of RentAHitman.com, said he started the website in 2005 with friends from an IT program in Santa Rosa, Calif. The group wanted to start a computer security company but never did, and shortly thereafter went their separate ways.
Innes all but forgot about the website until 2008, when he logged on just for the heck of it and found 300 or so emails in the inbox.
Some of the inquiries were hair-raising.
“How much for a hit? Do you perform asset extraction? Are you hiring?” were some of the eyebrow-raising questions people were asking, he recalled.
It occurred to him he’d accidentally started a fake hitman-for-hire site — one that would end up catching real-life criminals.
Seeing that some people out there thought this was an actual murder-for-hire website, Innes decided to have some fun with it, tweaking the original content and turning it into a parody site.
As of November 2022, the site had led to at least 30 arrests, according to Innes, and some convictions.
Innes told PEOPLE that over the years, he has found himself scratching his head.
“I mean, nobody could be stupid enough to hire a hitman on the internet, right?” he told PEOPLE.
source: people.com
