In this episode, Dave Hollerith interviews journalist and author, Brian Merchant, on a recent story he wrote about a darknet website that offers murder-for-hire services.

Part hoax and part reality, Merchant's investigation into this scam marketplace led him into a world of white hat hackers, fake hitmen, murderous spouses and real-world victims. He explains that although this dark corner of the internet is essentially fake, it has drastically harmed the lives of innocent people and blurred the line between virtual anonymous markets and real-world life and death consequences.

Topics:

The origins of online assassination markets.
How Chris Monterio hacked into the backend of a murder-for-hire scam website
How the murder-for-hire scam had terrifying real-world implications on innocent people
The frustratingly slow pace at which law enforcement investigated the issue
How Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are implicated in these scams
How future scenarios could play out for online assassination markets

Resources:

Click Here To Kill (Harper's Magazine)
Chris Monterio’s blog (Pirate Dot London)

Twitter:

Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant)
Dave (@dshollers)
Bitcoin Magazine

Sponsors:

Etoro

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Brian Merchant on The Darknet's Fake Murder-For-Hire Marketplace