The Law and Justice Room
How a Fake Rent-a-Hitman Site Became an Accidental Murder-for-Hire Sting Operation
How a Fake Rent-a-Hitman Site Became an Accidental Murder-for-Hire Sting Operation - You’d think no one would be stupid enough to book a murderer-for-hire on a website called RentAHitman.com. Bob Innes is here to tell you people are a lot dumber than you realize..
A few months ago, a 51-year-old woman from Michigan named Wendy Wein sent an email to a man she believed was named Guido Fanelli, the proprietor of a website called Rent-A-Hitman.com. “Got A Problem That Needs Resolving? With Over 17,985 U.S. Based Field Operatives, We Can Find A Solution Thats Right For You!” the website promised, along with a badge touting the site’s HIPPA compliance. Wein, indeed, had a problem that needed resolving: as she recounted in her email to Fanelli, there was a man who had ripped her off for $20,000 (her ex-husband, as authorities later discovered), and she wanted him taken care of. “I prefer not going jail. Thank you for your time,” the email concluded.
There was a small problem with this request. Guido Fanelli was not actually Guido Fanelli but Bob Innes, a repo-man in the Bay Area and the owner of Rent a Hitman, a website that has been used at least a dozen times to ensnare would-be assailants. Had Wein been paying attention, she would’ve noticed a few red flags that the site was not real: the fact that “HIPPA” stands for “Hitman Information Privacy and Protection Act of 1964,” for instance, or the section promising group and senior discounts. (The fact that the website openly offers the services of killers-for-hire is also a pretty significant tell). Nonetheless, these key facts eluded her, and as soon as she reached out to Innes, he alerted the authorities, who placed her under arrest; she was charged with solicitation to commit murder and illegal use of a computer to commit a crime, and is currently awaiting trial. (According to Monroe County first district courthouse records, her case is still pending, and her next hearing is scheduled for October 21st. Her court-appointed attorney did not respond to a request for comment.)
News of RentAHitman.com and the woman dumb enough to fall for it went semi-viral when it was reported last July, but Rolling Stone wanted to learn more about Innes’s operation and how, precisely, the website works. So we reached out via — what else? — the Rent a Hitman website, where “Guido Fanelli” responded immediately. We spoke to Innes about the origins of the site (“I really didn’t think that people were gonna be that stupid. Boy, did they show me,” he says), why Indonesians love murder-for-hire plots, and why you should be very, very careful when hiring a babysitter.
This is the story: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture...ation-1066756/
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