Fake Hitman Website Fools Woman, Who Is Headed to Jail

A real woman tried to hire a hitman on a fake website. Wendy Lynn Wein, 52, found Rent-A-Hitman online and filled out a form asking for help killing her ex-husband. Unfortunately for Wein and perhaps fortunately for her ex, that site is owned not by a hitman but computer professional Bob Innes who initially launched it in 2005 to promote a hacking prevention business. Years later he started checking the site’s inbox and found a lot of disturbing requests not related to that business. Since then, he’s made the site into an obvious joke, and, when he gets requests, he turns them over to police, KPIX reports.

That’s what he did with Wein, who used a pseudonym but her otherwise real contact information. Wein put in her service request on the site that her ex had stolen $20,000 from her, and said she didn’t want to commit the crime herself. “I prefer not going to jail,” she wrote, per the Daily Mail. Innes forwarded that to Michigan State Police, who posed as people affiliated with the site to contact Wein. She gave a detective her ex’s address and told them when and where he works, and a $200 down payment on the $5,000 tab for the murder. They charged her, and she pleaded guilty Friday and could serve up to 9 years in prison, FOX2 reports. (More weird crimes stories.)