New Jersey man paid hit man in Bitcoin to try to murder teenager, US says

A New Jersey man admitted in federal court Thursday that he tried to hire a hit man on the dark web, paying $20,000 in Bitcoin in an attempt to kill a 14-year-old who he feared would testify against him in child pornography. case, the Justice Department said.

The man, John Michael Musbach, 31, of Haddonfield, NJ, pleaded guilty to a murder-for-hire charge in US District Court in Camden, NJ, admitting that he had logged onto a website that promised to kill people in exchange for payment in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

He could face up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on June 13.

Mr. Musbach’s motivation for the failed murder-for-hire scheme, prosecutors said, dates back to the summer of 2015, when he exchanged sexually explicit images with the victim, who was then 13 years old and living in New York. The images resulted in child pornography charges against Musbach, so he decided “to have the victim killed so that the victim could not testify against him in the ongoing criminal case,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

That case was closed on October 11, 2017, when Musbach pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child by sexual contact, according to the Department of Justice. On 9 February 2018, he was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence with life parole.

A lawyer for Mr. Musbach, Rocco C. Cipparone, said in an interview Thursday night that his client, who worked in information technology, had “decided to put this case behind him and accept his responsibility without trial.”

“At this stage,” he added, “I’m relatively limited in what I can address publicly.”

Using data, chat logs and an inside informant from the murder-for-hire website, prosecutors at the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey meticulously outlined how Mr. Musbach had clumsily tried to arrange to have the child killed.

In 2015, the 13-year-old’s parents found out about the sexually explicit photographs and contacted New York police, who contacted authorities in Atlantic County, NJ. County officers executed a search warrant at Mr. Musbach’s residence in Galloway, N.J., and he soon faced criminal charges related to child pornography, the Justice Department said.

On May 7, 2016, a desperate Mr. Musbach began communicating with an administrator of a murder-for-hire website on the dark web who said “they were the right guys” to kill someone, prosecutors said.

“We have professional hitmen available throughout the United States, Canada and Europe, and you can easily hire a contract killer,” the website’s homepage reads, according to court documents.

Mr. Musbach’s screen name, court documents show, was “agentisai,” and transcripts of his messages with a website administrator show that he initially sought a gun and ammunition. But his request later changed, prosecutors said.

“Alternative to a gun warrant, I can enter a hit warrant,” Musbach wrote, according to court documents. “However, the target will be 14. Is that an acceptable age or too young? I can budget up to $20,000 for the order.”

“Yes,” replied an administrator, “14 years is acceptable.”

Until May 20, 2016, Musbach continued to speak with the administrator, who told him a gang member could “make the hit,” records show.

But around 7pm that day, Musbach received a startling message from the administrator: “Our website is a scam and we are sending customer and target information to the police.”

The person who sent the messages to Musbach warned him that if he did not send more money, the police would be told about his actions, prosecutors said.

Mr. Musbach’s response was terse: “Is this a joke?”

Mr. Cipparone, Mr. Musbach’s lawyer, said: “It’s basically a website that defrauded him of the roughly $20,000 that he spent.” Still, he added, that “didn’t affect how his state of mind was.”

It is unclear whether there was further correspondence between Musbach and the administrator after May 20, but prosecutors said that in January 2019, a person referred to in court documents as “Source” provided federal agents with information about the murder-for-hire website, as well as messages from a specific user – “agentisai.”

Investigators have pieced together other details in the case, including Musbach’s Google search history, which included research on child custody laws, a search for sex offenders in New Jersey and the terms “how do you get notified of an indictment” and “death by chloroform”” , prosecutors said.

Investigators also found another detail: Mr. Musbach had figured out how to clear his browser data.