Murder plots are infohazards

post by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-13T19:15:09.749Z · LW · GW · 23 comments

Contents

23 comments

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 world 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?

23 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by Dagon · 2025-02-14T15:44:28.757Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Can you explore a bit more about why you can't ethically dump it on the internet?  From my understanding, this is information you have not broken any laws to obtain, and have made no promises as to confidentiality.

If not true publication, what keeps you from sending it to prosecutors and police?  They may or may not act, but that's true no matter who you give it to (and true NOW of you).  

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-14T17:35:59.988Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

With regards to dumping the info on the internet, the files by definition contain extensive personal identifable information about people, names, addresses, photos, social media links often alongside allegations of their alleged crimes ranging such as infidelity, child abuse and financial fraud.

I can rarely substantiate these, and know for a fact based on the investigated cases that such allegations are often completely fabricated in order to frame the user's request for violence as more morally justified. I don't think it's fair to publish such information and allegations publicly for both the victims and my own personal liability.

The police literally are unable to take this data beyond a case by case basis, and doing so requires scores of emails and phone calls between multiple specialists. As I am not a crime victim, I don't get any reference number to reuse and frankly it's a nightmare. I am still attempting bulk submissions via private detectives to get the information submitted as intelligence, but that is different to making an effective crime report.

Prosecutors, even those who have prosecuted people on the Kill List previously in my experience don't respond to my emails, even when their are victims in their same jurisdiction.

Replies from: shankar-sivarajan, AnnaSalamon, VermillionStuka
comment by Shankar Sivarajan (shankar-sivarajan) · 2025-02-15T03:30:15.756Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It would be a valuable service to point the people targeted to information about them. I'm imagining something like Have I Been Pwned, but if you don't want to post the info in cleartext, perhaps you could encrypt the information about each person with name as the key? 

The way I see it, if I were on this list, I'd want to be able to find out. You keeping the information to yourself (or telling only cops who ignore the information completely) out of some sense of ethics doesn't help me very much. 

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-15T08:37:43.698Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I have had very random people reach out to me who have been the target of threats etc so I have looked them up.

But compared to the scope of data breaches and the ease of checking them via an email address, my 1000 names is not at that scale. I have had some very small scale investigations work commissioned off of these queries, but it's so quick and easy for me to do I have not got around to charging or doing extended investigations.

comment by AnnaSalamon · 2025-02-14T22:13:57.152Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Gotcha.  No idea if this is a good or bad idea, but: what are your thoughts on dumping an edited version of it onto the internet, including names, photos and/or social media links, and city/country but not precise addresses or allegations?

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-14T22:35:35.582Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

But how are people supposed to react to such framing? Also some orders are limited to just name / address etc, where as some plot graphic torture for weeks and months.

comment by Vermillion (VermillionStuka) · 2025-02-15T12:47:25.723Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Just dump the names so people have a chance of realising they are at risk then? Seems a lot better than just leaving it.

comment by RedMan · 2025-02-14T16:16:37.948Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

You're not doing anything immoral by just ignoring your archive.  Working on 'spec' in public safety usually just leads to sadness.  You're in a weird place where you're facing the kind of problem a mid or late career professional sees, but without social support from people who have seen this stuff before, and without easing into it like you would have in an early career.  So you have the problem, but none of the emotional tools to address it.

As far as the situation specifically, making a form letter saying something like 'someone has paid x $ to do you harm through (description of the service), further details are available upon request', and sending it to as many prospective victims as you can identify, is probably as much as you can reasonably be expected to do.

Sure, local law enforcement should probably do it, you won't find everyone, and someone you do find might come back and cause you problems for "making threats", so in your situation, I probably wouldn't even bother going that far, but you seem pretty committed to doing "something".  So that should be an achievable end that lets you move on emotionally.  

It's hard to talk about analogous situations without saying things that are impolite.  Feel free to PM me if you have questions or details you're not comfortable sharing, I've worked with "bad stuff" before, and might be able to help.

"People ask me to tell them my worst stories.  I used to tell them, but as it turns out, nobody really wants to hear them" is a common sentiment.

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-14T17:50:21.141Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

without social support from people who have seen this stuff before

The little contact I have had with police doing darknet investigations of this nature leads me to believe they are mostly ineffective at anything international, as does last year's operation by the police against the site.

The police have presumably learnt that 'international is hard' (which it is) and chosen to accept this.

In about 50% of cases I have social media links for the victims, but that is not the same as having their emails. I am working on abstracting the contact details from the messages so I could pass it for cheap bulk osint, but it isn't that cheap when you are going after semi-hidden PII across different countries and languages with significant different postures on public records.

Per 'Kill List', I believe they got close to 0% hit rate emailing, messaging and phoning people. People only started to listen when journalists or police knocked on their doors.

The problem with local law enforcement is they don't understand the complexity (bitcoin, darknet, scam but real threat), and national law enforcement is not directly available. There is nearly always an insistence on investigating on a case-by-case, and not reusing central specialist. (The US has been a little better here, but they have state level specialists, where as most countries utilise national specialists). And local law enforcement want to do everything over phone calls and treat you as a suspect / time waster / scammer.

By the way, I don't really consider this 'public' safety, as it's all based on individuals, but I guess that's a fair comparison.

comment by Daniel Kokotajlo (daniel-kokotajlo) · 2025-02-15T00:22:17.618Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

There are 800 names that need investigation+protection, presumably the more difficult ones since you probably prioritized the easier cases. How much would it cost to hire investigators to do all 800?

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-15T08:55:11.839Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It varies by the country's policing capability, citizens online footprint, the history and status of the feud, the severity of the online element and language barriers as well as highly variable economies of scale such as an effective engagement with a law enforcement agency.

The only ones that have come close to this have been the FBI and the Bundespolizei (German Federal Police) where there is evidence they did at least a basic investigation of every major case based on a medium (US) and very high (Germany) public arrest and prosecution records.

I won't share exact figures as my hiring of detectives is still in the 'trial and error phase', but it cost over £1000 to work one case in Japan, and nearly that to work the one case I have in New Zealand.

In somewhere like India I would get a far cheaper day rate, but you often have to retain lawyers (and likely bribes) and other costs to get things done there. Yet in countries like US, Canada and Europe, instead of corruption you have the complex bureucracy of even reporting these effectively.

Appriasing these case is something I am actively working on, so I can publish this info to capture the interest of people from those countries.

comment by Joseph Miller (Josephm) · 2025-02-15T09:57:15.249Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

How long does it take you to save one life on average? GiveWell's top charities save a life for about $5000. If you can get close to that there should be many EA philanthropists willing to fund you or a charity you create.

And I think they should be willing to go up to like $10-20k at least because murders are probably especially bad deaths in terms of their effects on the world.

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-15T10:19:38.432Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

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.

Replies from: Josephm
comment by Joseph Miller (Josephm) · 2025-02-15T12:02:32.002Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

In that case I would consider applying for EA funds if you are willing to do the work professionally or set up a charity to do it. I think you could make a strong case that it meets the highest bar for important, neglected and tractable work.

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-15T14:22:18.177Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Do you know anyone who could guide me through this process?

comment by AnnaSalamon · 2025-02-14T20:27:07.399Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Can you notify the intended victims?  Or at least the more findable intended victims?

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-14T21:17:47.345Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Not really. Journalists spent months doing this via phone, email and messages and were ignored.

Also, there are literal 'I am a hitman hired to kill you, pay me money to stop' scams that exist.

Replies from: AnnaSalamon
comment by AnnaSalamon · 2025-02-14T22:20:11.255Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Maybe some of those who received the messages were more alert to their surroundings after receiving it, even if they weren't sure it was real and didn't return the phone/email/messages?

I admit this sounds like a terrible situation.

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-14T22:39:16.727Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Maybe, but I have been contacted by people who have received the scam email before.

It's true that some people reached out AFTER the podcast aired, only then taking it seriously. I am partially able to leverage it for credibility also.

Ultimatey significant effort is required to contact people, and then further more to provide a full context, risk assessment, after which they typically require support taking the issue through multiple law enforcement agencies, that is if they don't turn to violence themselves which has happened in at least one occasion:(

comment by Kongo Landwalker (kongo-landwalker) · 2025-02-15T10:28:38.976Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Have you contacted INTERPOL? Why did it fail? Seems like it is their job to take such cases.

What do you think about running a trusted team of volunteers? Shifting from managing cases by your own hands to managing a non-profit investigation organisation and its public image and recognition.

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-15T11:03:25.404Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Interpol (and Europol) doesn't work for the public, only for incumbent law enforcement agencies.

Europol took explicit credit for one case, https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/dark-web-hitman-identified-through-crypto-analysis but that was actually overturned in the Italian courts years later.

Attempts by the podcast team to route cases from the UK through to Interpol and other countries yielded no results, likely due to the game of 'telephone' such referrals go through. One case in India ended up informing the would-be-killer about his plot being discovered.

I would of course work with volunteers, but the work is stressful and brings you into contact with people unsafe situations and hostile and skeptical law enforcement. I guess it's akin to being a social services worker. My limited attempts to do this has not yielded results.

'I'll help!'

<shares email of local police station>

Exposing this information gives ammunition to ruin lives, and it has. I remain anxious about sharing it with people who's trustworthiness I can't vouch for.

comment by Archimedes · 2025-02-15T00:41:26.472Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Are there any NGOs that might be able to help? I couldn't find any that were a great fit but you could try contacting the CyberPeace Institute to see if they have any recommendations.

Replies from: chris-topher
comment by Chris Monteiro (chris-topher) · 2025-02-15T09:01:39.770Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I've looked! The only one that comes close I am aware of is https://globalinitiative.net/ with whom I have been trying to engage for some time. There appears to be more money to study crime and do things like victim support than any money to fight crime.

If I were to speculate, policing agencies would not like the existence of non state-aligned policing agencies, being considered like mercenaries, private detectives, vigellantes and hacktivists.

Any body who could appear sufficiently legitimate in the eyes of the law would be subsumed into the system by definition I reckon.