An Italian woman was sentenced to six years in a Danish prison for hiring a hitman with Bitcoin to murder her boyfriend.
We truly live in an age of convenience. One can order clothes, food, and entertainment online with extreme ease. Of course, this also means that it’s becoming that much easier to purchase unsavory things online, such as illicit narcotics, stolen passwords, and even a murder or two. Which is what happened when an Italian woman living in Denmark hired a hitman with bitcoins via the Dark Web (insert ominous music here) to kill her boyfriend. Now the woman is being jailed for six years due to her Bitcoin murder plot.
Bitcoins for Blood
The Italian woman, who has remained unnamed, hired the hitman on a site called Crime Bay. She wanted the hitman to murder her boyfriend, so she sent the hitman a photograph of the intended victim along with his address. She insisted that the hitman use a silencer and that he succeed in killing the victim on the first attempt.
The angle that has the media salivating is that the woman paid for this contract with 4.1 bitcoins, which was worth around $4,000 at the time of the contract. Now that amount is worth over $73,000. I wonder if the woman is angrier about being sent to prison for six years or that the bitcoins she paid with are now worth so much more.
Do the Crime, Pay the Time
Apparently, hiring a hitman on the Dark Web (cue even more ominous music) with Bitcoin is an unusual circumstance in Denmark. The 58-year-old woman pled not guilty to the charges, but she was just convicted. She’ll spend the next six years in a Danish prison. After her sentence is completed, she’ll be deported from Denmark, where she’s lived for the last 30 years. The intended victim was in the court room when the sentence was handed down, and he spoke to the woman after the verdict. There’s no details on what was said, but my fervent hope is that the man has Bitcoin of his own and that he told her how rich he is after selling it for almost $18,000 a pop.
This story has everything that a media outlet could desire. You have murder, a contract killer, the Dark Web, and the use of Bitcoin to do the deed. Obvious this incident is proof that cryptocurrency goes hand-in-hand with illegal and terrible things. Yes, I’m being sarcastic on that last point. The reality is that cryptocurrency can be used for good things or bad things, just like any other type of currency.
Do you think that the six years is a reasonable punishment for an attempted murder? Is the woman kicking herself after seeing how much Bitcoin is now worth? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Pixabay, Pxhere, and Bitcoinist archives.
