The dark truth of a fake killer-for-hire website

August 1, 2023

By Kim Komando

You wouldn’t hire a hitman on the internet … would you? Even if you wouldn’t, plenty of people would and actually did. 

Buckle your seatbelts, folks. This ride’s a wild one. 

The backstory

RentAHitman.com creator Bob Innes never thought things would go this far. He recently shared all the details of this crazy story with the Daily Mail. 

Back in the day, Innes and some friends kicked around starting up a web security business. In 2005, he bought the domain for RentAHitman.com, mainly as a click-baity way to drive traffic to the site. However, Innes’ friends wound up moving out of state and the business never really took off.

Innes eventually put RentAHitman.com up for sale and set up an email address for interested buyers. After forgetting about the site for a few years, he returned to check on things and was shocked at what he found.

Inside the contact email inbox were hundreds (yes, hundreds) of messages from people who actually wanted a real killer for hire. After making his initial earth-shattering discovery, Innes turned the information over to the local police department, which then launched a worldwide investigation. 

Today, Innes dedicates his life to catching these wannabe killers online. He spends about four hours per day looking through emails for serious requests. Sometimes, the work gets emotionally taxing, especially when kids are involved.

Methods to the madness

How do these people order their bogus hits? Visitors to RentAHitman.com are first directed to a service request page with an application. The site also has many fake reviews, making the service seem legit, at least to those who are goofy enough to believe it. 

In the application, people include personal information and details on their “intended target.” While many requests are a joke or a prank on friends and relatives, a startling number of them are real. We’re talking around 150 per month. 

RentAHitman.com has led to dozens of arrests and at least 12 convictions of people with plans to make others disappear. 

Since 2015, RentAHitman.com has been visited 507,000 times. Just last week alone, the site was viewed almost 45,000 times! Most of the visitors are male and roughly a third of them are under the age of 18. Don’t get on your teen’s bad side!

Who needs a hitman?

The very first fish Innes caught was a British woman living in Canada named Helen Kaplan. She wanted her mom, aunt, and uncle taken out as a way to get even over a stolen inheritance. The stories only get crazier from there. 

More recently, 18-year-old Jazmin Paez was arrested after ordering a hit on her three-year-old son. In her request, she mentioned him getting in the way of a romantic relationship. Guess she won’t be winning the mother-of-the-year award.

Wendy Wein, 53, sent in an application on RentAHitman.com in January 2022, requesting a hit on her ex-husband. She went on to offer $5,000 to an undercover cop instead. Wein was convicted and will spend seven to 24 years in jail. 

Moral of the story? Don’t hire a hitman on the internet … at least not from a bogus website!