'I found a Kill List on the Dark Web so I started contacting names to warn them'

A group of journalists have opened up about their discovery of a website where people can hire hitmen, including a 'kill list' of hundreds of people who other people wanted dead

In early 2020, tech journalist Carl Miller made a bone-chilling find. Deep within the dark web, while poring over its shadowy corners from London, a hacker colleague named Chris unearthed a secret website featuring an ominous "kill list" loaded with hundreds of names of people marked for death by anonymous payers.

This grisly catalogue included photographs and intimate personal details of those slated for assassination, and clear instructions such as: "Kill him and make it look like a car accident." Another command on the site was just as harrowing: "Seeking house to be burnt down with occupants inside. No survivors."

Recounting his initial reaction, Miller admitted: "I remember being quite calm at the time," but later the gravity of what he'd stumbled upon hit him hard. "Then that evening, sitting there in the darkness, looking out of my window at this Covid-silent city, thinking 'what the **** have I got myself into?"

The discovery launched a four-year investigation for Miller, Chris, and a small team of journalists, as they sought to unravel the mystery behind this gruesome discovery. The journey would involve police forces and intelligence agencies worldwide, including the Met and the FBI.

The bizarre twists of the investigation are documented in the new podcast, Kill List, with the first six episodes now available. Miller quickly realised that the posts on the website weren't leading to actual murders. Instead, the kill list website was a con, tricking users into sending untraceable bitcoin payments for contract killings that would never happen.

Masked as a middleman facilitating the grim meeting of hitmen with those who seek their services and vowing to tuck away the bitcoin in escrow until the deed was executed the website was in fact a front for deception. Behind this charade stood an enigmatic Romanian fraudster simply known as Yura, who orchestrated an intricate facade.

Pretending to relay messages from the hitmen, he'd respond to customers claiming he needed more resources, stringing them along to squeeze out as much money as possible. Miller recounts the eye-opening moment of discovery to The Telegraph: "We realised quite early on that the site itself had no interest in sending out hitmen.

"If they were real, which they were not, these were the most incompetent hitmen on the face of the planet. They kept getting lost, or losing their weapons, or they'd attend the target and discover they were surrounded by security and you needed to hire another hitman. He would always try to upsell, to get more and more bitcoin."

The assassins were fake, but someone wanted these people dead all the same. Miller and his team realised they had a responsibility to help. "We dropped what we were doing and realised these were serious threats to lives," he says. They used their site access to create a "pipeline", allowing them to track potential threats as they emerged, and involved the authorities.

"I phoned up the [Met] Police; I think any sane person would do that as a next step," he remembers. "Then the police's main worry initially was whether I was sane or not. They came round and conducted mental health checks on me. They said the vast majority of these kinds of calls, about dark net assassins and so on, are related to mental health issues."

Even after verifying Miller's mental stability and the legitimacy of the threats, the police's response was tepid at best. They passed the details to Interpol but didn't take much further action. With targets scattered across the globe, the London police didn't chase down the leads. Disappointed by the police's reaction, Miller and his colleagues realised they'd have to warn the endangered individuals themselves. The task proved challenging.

When Miller reached out over the phone with his British accent, alerting strangers to the peril they faced, many brushed him off or hung up, mistaking his life-saving call for a scam. Despite his best efforts, Miller recounted the formidable challenge of alerting those targeted for assassination, finding many simply wouldn't take his warnings seriously.

"I initially thought it would be gangland, drugs deals gone wrong, that kind of thing," Miller reveals. The investigation found that most of the time it was people trying to kill spouses, former spouses, love rivals, people they were locked in an adoption conflict with. Then there was a smaller group of business partners, siblings or parents.

The wannabe murderers were anything but criminal geniuses. "Both the targets and the perpetrators are going around leading normal lives," he notes. "They are doctors and air traffic controllers and fishmongers. They don't have a connection with organized crime. I don't think a hardened criminal would think these dark web sites could go about delivering murders."

This increased the complexity of alerting potential victims, as Miller and his team had to navigate without alerting the aspiring hitman-hirers to their infiltration of the website. As the work progressed, police began to take notice, convinced by the intricate details submitted via the website. Arrests and criminal charges quickly followed.

To date, the investigation has led to 34 arrests and 28 convictions across 11 countries, totalling 150 years of prison sentences collectively. Among those apprehended was Ronald Ilg, a neonatal doctor from Spokane, Washington, who was nabbed by FBI agents after expressing his wish for his estranged wife to be kidnapped and forcibly injected with heroin to dissuade her from pursuing a divorce.

In January 2023, he was handed an eight-year prison sentence. The chilling case first came to light when Miller contacted a woman named Elena from Switzerland, who appeared relatively unfazed by the threat. However, upon closer inspection of her estranged husband, it was discovered that he had secured an apartment right next to hers.

It was stocked with firearms, zipties, bin bags and GPS trackers. In another incident last year, Whitney Franks, a staff member at Sports Direct in Milton Keynes, found herself slapped with a 12-year sentence (later reduced) after attempting to have her colleague and love rival, Ruut Ruutna, killed. This case highlighted the extensive reach of cybercrime.

The brains behind all this was Yura, who employed a range of tactics to draw attention to his ominous website, including setting up a fake hitman comparison site with advice on navigating the dark web. His strategy involved hiring people to write positive reviews for his service while criticising any competitors. Typing "how to hire a hitman" into Google would alarmingly guide users directly to Yura's website. Miller wishes for the podcast to shine a light on the extensive nature of cybercrime. 'Kill List' is airing until Christmas, with fresh episodes weekly.