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Exclusive: An Australian woman arrested and convicted for inciting another person to murder her parents was caught after a podcast host uncovered a haunting "kill list" on the dark web.
The Canberra woman pleaded guilty in February after police accused her of trying to solicit a hitman's services online using Bitcoin.
This "hitman", though, was a scam artist who was taking money for murders but never carrying them out.
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British author Carl Miller first stumbled across the Australian case after an IT expert found a horrifying murder-for-hire site on the dark net in 2020, 9news.com.au can reveal.
There was a fleeting mention of a high-profile Canberra couple who were assassination targets on the list in Miller's podcast Kill List, along with hundreds of other targets from the US, UK, Canada, India and Spain.
Miller alerted authorities in Australia's capital of the woman's plans to have her parents murdered in 2020 after she paid $6000 to the bogus hitman site.
His tip-off resulted in a conviction of inciting another person to murder after the woman, now 30, pleaded guilty in court before her trial began.
The Australian Federal Police confirmed to 9news.com.au the podcast had played a role in their investigation.
She is yet to be sentenced in court.
"I remember it quite well, it was one of the first cases," Miller told 9news.com.au.
"When we first broke into the murder-for-hire site, this was one of the cases that we initially [saw] and identified."
The targets cannot be named for legal reasons, however Miller said they are "prominent business people in Canberra".
The identity of the woman has also been suppressed.
Do you have a story? Contact reporter April Glover at april.glover@nine.com.au
The lengthy process of alerting the Australian Federal Police began with engaging the London Metropolitan Police, who got in touch with Interpol.
Miller said his team traced the payment, which was only part of the agreed $20,000 sum to kill the woman's parents, and handed that evidence to the police.
An arrest was then made in December 2020 and the woman pleaded guilty to inciting another to commit murder this year.
"We had to resist quite fiercely attempts by the Australian police to make us appear in court."
The Australian Federal Police confirmed to 9news.com.au the podcast had played a role in their investigation.
While producing Kill List, Miller tried to cold call several targets to warn them of the danger to their lives.
He was unsuccessful in contacting the Canberra couple before police got involved.
"We tried, later on, to make contact directly with the targets involved, but could basically have no luck reaching them," Miller said of the targets.
"We tried for a while, but we never got through directly, I never spoke to them."
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Miller said he and his team, who were still in the early days of producing Kill List, had to fight Australian cops not to testify in court.
He and several other journalists were still making their way through the list of targets and were concerned public knowledge of the site could derail their attempts to warn others.
"We had to resist quite fiercely attempts by the Australian police to make us appear in court," he said.
"We were very anxious our access to the site would be revealed in public as part of the prosecution, and the shadowy Romanian cybercriminal gang running the site might then know of our access."
Soon after, the woman changed her plea to guilty and Miller's team avoided being cross-examined in an ACT court.
This case was just one of countless murder-for-hire attempts in multiple jurisdictions across the world.
Podcast exposed murder plots around the world
Miller's podcast has led to 34 arrests and 28 convictions across 11 countries and prison sentences totalling over 150 years.
The titular "kill list", similar to an Excel spreadsheet of hundreds of people around the world whom clients wanted murdered, was discovered by IT expert and hacker Chris Monteiro in early 2020.
The website was run by a "shadowy" Romanian criminal who took cryptocurrency payments but never provided hitman services.
Among the targets was US woman Amy Allwine, who was murdered by her husband Stephen Allwine in 2018 after her name appeared on the website.
It was too late for Amy, but Miller could try and save others from the same fate.
There were 500 names on the list but 175 had money change hands.
These people became Miller's priority as he combed through the list, found phone numbers and addresses and tried to alert them.
Since Miller's podcast was released, he has retired from working with police on the "kill list" and the website is now being accessed by authorities.
"No more having to comb through the most grotesque kind of orders you can possibly imagine," he said.
When asked if there are more scam hitman services sitting live on the dark web, he said: "We know there are".
"There's a whole industry of these things," Miller added gravely.
Kill List, from Wondery and Novel, is available everywhere you get your podcasts.
