Now that we're no longer allowed to use IQ tests and SATs to screen applicants, this may have to do
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Nigerian Prince will kill your enemies — send money
Woman who tried to hire assassin at RentAHitman.com is arrested.
Seething and vengeful, Wendy Wein was on the lookout for the professional killer she meant to hire as she waited inside a southeastern Michigan cafe in July 2020.
Wein wanted her ex-husband dead. But she didn’t want to murder him herself and didn’t know anyone she trusted to do it for her. So she did what a lot of people do when they have a job they can’t or don’t want to do themselves — she searched for help on the Internet.
On RentAHitman.com.
What Wein found was presumably reassuring. The website promised her confidentiality. It boasted of industry awards. It showed off testimonials of satisfied customers, including one from Laura S., who’d “caught my husband cheating with the babysitter.” The website bragged about complying with HIPPA, which it defined as the Hitman Information Privacy & Protection Act of 1964, a nod to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, the law passed in 1996 to protect patients’ medical information.
The trouble for Wein was that RentAHitman.com is a fake website. It’s not run by Guido Fanelli, as it claims, but by Bob Innes, a 54-year-old Northern California man who forwards any serious inquiries to law enforcement. Innes launched the site 16 years ago as part of an Internet security business that never went anywhere. Instead, it’s served as a honey pot of sorts, attracting people who want to hire professional killers.
For Wein, it didn’t go well. She was arrested within days of seeking out an assassin and pleaded guilty earlier this month to solicitation of murder and using a computer to commit a crime. Under her plea agreement, she faces at least nine years in prison when she’s sentenced in January.
Wein, 52, is not the only one who’s gotten stuck in Innes’s digital trap. About 650 to 700 people have contacted him since he first registered the website in 2005, including some 400 who, like Wein, filled out his “service request form,” which requires users to give their names, email addresses and phone numbers, along with the same information of their “targets,” Innes said.
