An Iowa teen has been arrested and charged after allegedly attempting to hire a hitman to kill a seven-year-old child, according to local authorities.
The 17-year-old was charged with solicitation to commit murder after they reportedly submitted the child's personal information, including their name, address, identifying details and where they could be found, to the website rentahitman.com.
Storm Lake Police Department received a report around midnight on June 2 about someone who had visited the website twice to set up the murder of the seven-year-old. The site's administrator forwarded the information to the police department.
Police worked through the night to identify both the planned target and possible suspect. On the morning of June 2, an undercover officer contacted the suspect about the hit, confirming that the teen wanted the child killed.
Around 3.30pm that day, police arrested the suspect and gathered information from their mobile, causing authorities to believe that the solicitation was a credible threat to the child. The teen, who was found at an address in Storm Lake, was charged and referred to juvenile court and is being held in the Cherokee YES Center.
The child and their family were not harmed and were unaware of the potential threat, according to authorities.
'Rent-a-Hitman' is a parody site, featuring fake testimonials, a request form and even a job application for aspiring hitmen. It was created in 2005 to advertise a cyber security startup company which never made it off the ground.
Real inquiries submitted to the site have led to at least one arrest after a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman in Tennessee was indicted on federal charges. The FBI alleged he used the site to apply for a job as an assassin.
Though 'Rent-a-Hitman' is a bogus site, there are similar sites which exist on the dark web, which claim to legitimately offer the same services. A criminal complaint was filed by federal authorities in Knoxville last month, accusing a Tennessee woman of trying to hire a hitman to kill the wife-to-be of a man she met on Match.com.
47-year-old Melody Sasser was arrested on May 18 after allegedly tracking her love rival Jennifer Wallace using a fitness app. She has been accused of sending $10,000 in Bitcoin to a site called 'Online Killers Market' in exchange for the assassination.
She'd met David Wallace on Match.com and the pair had become hiking friends. But when he revealed he was moving to a different state with the woman he planned to marry, she allegedly turned to the dark web.
Ms Sasser allegedly posted her hitman demands on the website in January. She's reported to have written: "It needs to seem random of accident. Or plant drugs, do not want a long investigation."
Authorities said she reportedly said to the pair "I hope you both fall and die" after learning of their plans to marry. Ms Sasser also allegedly passed on details of the victim's location after finding information from the fitness tracking app Strava.
Ms Sasser was arrested on probable cause that she allegedly attempted to hire a hitman to commit murder on May 18. She was due to appear in federal court on Thursday, June 8, and if convicted could face up to 10 years in prison.
