Ex-Microsoft engineer gets seven years after trying to hire hitman for double murder A former Microsoft software engineer has been sentenced to seven years in prison after paying $16,000 in Bitcoin to arrange the murder of the parents of his adopted children. On October 27, 2021 Christopher Pence was arrested by FBI agents at his home in Cedar Creek, Utah, and subsequently admitted that in July and August of …
If he, the hitman (or woman, it is the 21st century after all), their respective bank accounts, and/or the exchange site weren't all physically located in NY state, they could probably still stick him with that charge. It might be a fair bit weaker at trial, but I don't think the prosecution would care much since they have a pretty open and shut attempted murder charge. The interstate commerce thing would just be the bacon bits on the top of the salad.
If everything was in one state, the interstate charge would not apply and it would just be a murder case. This is a federal charge that adds to, not replaces, any other charges at the state level. In addition, if he was in New York at the time but the exchange or bank involved wasn't, the interstate charge still applies.
1) The fact that he shares a last name with the former VP is just priceless
2) This is almost as funny as if he used that Rent-a-Hitman site which continues to get solicitations despite being pretty obvious it's a joke site
3) The statement for the sister's gofundme is... interesting
4) Sounds like the children are the real losers in this as their biological parents sound like dicks and their adoptive parents (well, father at least) is an idiot almost worthy of a world's dumbest criminals TV show
5) Credit for the guy's comment as he's being perp walked out of his house, the judge should knock one or two hours off his sentence for the humor value
TFA said that they had legally adopted 5 of 7 (yikes!) kids from the biological parents, and that there was some kind of dispute involving the biological parents filing some kind of complaint with the Utah CPS, which is what escalated things to the point in the story. Of course there's a whole lot to the story we don't really know, and probably never will know because the kids are minors, and there being three sides to every story.
It sounds like they've been involved from the start given that's what caused the guy to want to organize some murders. Even if they hadn't been, that's the kind of thing the police would do after arresting someone with children, although if there is another person taking care of them, they might have delayed calling them. I'm pretty confident that someone is already trying to do something, though I don't know what they're doing or if it's the right thing.
Or, maybe it's just that the person working at Microsoft was coincidental and not really relevant to the story except for a flimsy excuse for El Reg to cover it.* Not everything is about your Windows vs Linux holy war. Seek out a therapist in your area. They can help you identify whatever it is that you feel is missing in your life that you try to replace with religious nonsense like Windows vs Linux.
* Not saying it's a bad thing, just that it's a flimsy excuse
This guy is stupid. Deep down incurably stupid.
Aside from the moronic attitude which thinks that having people killed is a good solution, putting his bitcoin in an exchange wallet is just dumb to start with. Using that identifiable bitcoin to pay for a non-existent hit man is cosmically stupid. Thinking that you can hire a real hit man using the Internet or the Darknet makes him Darwin award material.
That anyone would donate to his sister's gofundme just goes to prove how many equally stupid people there are out there.
But we do get all those wonderful "World's dumbest criminals" TV shows to watch and laugh at.* So, it's not all bad, just like 98-99% bad.
* Will never forget a story about some guy, on foot, who gives a bank drive-thru employee a note saying he has a knife and to give him money. The bank employee is sitting behind a couple inches of bullet proof glass, so tells the guy to wait while they go get the money. They call the cops, and the "robber" is still there when they show up to arrest him.
Isn’t this what a bag of money left underneath an overpass is for? It’s old tech but it’s a LOT less traceable.
Also, if you’re want to have someone ‘done in’ and you’re not the mafia or the government - it’s probably less risky to diy. Certainly cheaper - and no one will be blackmailing you or ‘singing like a canary’ to get a plea bargain if they get nabbed.
I think I’ve thought about this too much. Am I on a list now?
> I think I’ve thought about this too much. Am I on a list now?
Yeah you are, along with Agatha Christie, anyone who has borrowed an Agatha Christie book from a library, and anyone who watches several hours of crime drama a week on TV... so it's probably quicker to write down who *isn't* on such a list.
If they pull my internet search history will I suddenly get porn industry head hunters contacting me offering me work?!? Only for the kinkier fetish productions of course!!!
---------> I'm into sadism, beastiality and necrophilia. My ex left me cos I was flogging a dead horse!
I gather some mystery writers have a horror of the FBI (etc) pulling their internet (search) history and jumping to conclusions.
That isn't new, the Dorothy L. Sayers novel Strong Poison is actually about a woman mystery novelist who is on trial for the murder of her ex-lover, largely based on the premise that she knew all about the poison used.
Nancy Brophy murdered her husband after writing a book about murdering one's husband.
A plan so cunning...
Isn’t this what a bag of money left underneath an overpass is for? It’s old tech but it’s a LOT less traceable.
Exactly. Bitcoin seems to have a reputation among the uninitiated of being a mysterious, untraceable system, perfect for anonymous activity. In reality, if you stop and think about it, it's almost the complete opposite- and far worse than cash- in that respect.
Here's your brief reminder that :-
* Bitcoin ownership and transactions are pseudonymous, not anonymous, and that
* All transactions are permanently recorded on the blockchain along with the addresses (i.e. pseudonyms) they're associated with.
The only thing stopping everyone and anyone having access to a complete, perfect and publicly-accessible record of every transaction you've carried out is the lack of a connection between that address/pseudonym and your real identity. And it only takes a single mistake or something you overlooked that would connect you with any *one* of the numerous transactions you carried out using that address, and it's all over. (*)
Bitcoin could practically have been designed to lure in the gullible. The one person I'd expect to have known better would have been an engineer for Microsoft.
(*) Yes, you can use a different address, if you're disciplined enough and avoid making mistakes that would connect them. And yes, cryptocurrency tumblers exist. But they only exist in the first place because of the above flaw and- aside from the legality- good luck in ensuring that it's been operated in a sufficiently rigorous manner and that those who operate it don't have records they'll hand over to authorities in exchange for a plea bargain.
> "has been accused of a terrible crime that did not involve any harm or misconduct to the children or his wife and did not involve any infidelity."
So aside from those conditions, absolutely any other terrible crime is fine by the sister.
But if the hitperson had settled for, say, $15,000 *and* a knee-trembler behind the bikesheds, only that last bit would have been totally beyond the pale?
It's entirely possible we are missing some context here. Could be that one of the neighbors got hauled away for kiddie diddling the week prior, so everybody in the area was going to assume this guy got hauled off for the same reason as soon as they heard he was arrested.
> Could be that one of the neighbors got hauled away for kiddie diddling the week prior, so everybody in the area was going to assume this guy got hauled off for the same reason
That is what came to mind? Bleak! And not flattering about the neighbours.
I decided against saying this in my earlier post above because it might sound religiously intolerant*, but... It's Utah, home of the Mormons. The idea that he might have been a child abuser/molester, and/or adulterer is a lot more culturally significant to them compared to the rest of us.
* I'm actually very egalitarian in my dislike of organized religion. The philosophy bits on how to be a good person are generally fine, it's when they get into the supernatural bullshit that things go pear-shaped
Chris Pence: ClippyAI, search for a hitman/person on the Darkweb :]
ClippyAI: Certainly Chris, before that could I interest you in upgrading to the MS premium life-time-into-perpetuity software license that will expire on the next iteration of Windows.
Indeed, I'm shocked- *shocked*- that a system whose entire point was that it was built around a publicly-accessible blockchain that recorded and made visible every single transaction and- more importantly- the pseudonymous addresses involved (pseudonyms which could be broken if any one of those countless transactions could be associated with someone's real-world identity) turned out not to be untraceable.
But mutual sarcasm towards Bitcoin's "untraceable" reputation aside, paying closer attention to this particular story shows that actually- in this case- it wasn't even that which caused his downfall, it was the fact he'd carried out the transfer via an exchange service that he'd given all his personally-identifying details to!
FFS. (Shakes head).
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