A Michigan woman is facing serious prison time after she allegedly tried to hire an assassin on a fake website in 2020. The woman went to Rent-A-Hitman, a site used to catch potential killers despite what it advertises online.
Rent-A-Hitman says that it has close to 18,000 field operatives who could take someone out anywhere in the U.S. The site has "reviews" from customers who used the services and were satisfied, but none of it is true. Instead, it is run by a California man who turns potential clients over to the police.
This is where Wendy Wein went when she decided that she wanted her husband dead, not knowing that she was setting herself up to be bamboozled.
Wein went to the site and filled out a form asking for a consultation about her situation. When contacted, she believed she was talking to the site's chief consultant Guido Fanelli where she said, "I prefer not going to jail," CNN reported.
Wein had told Fanelli that she couldn't believe their website wasn't on the "dark web" and then went on to offer $5,000 to have her husband killed.
But there is no Guido Fanelli. Fanelli is a name that Bob Innes, who runs the site, created to help trick people looking for hired killers.
Now, Wein is headed to prison, joining a list of other Rent-A-Hitman clients who went looking for a murder to kill someone in their life.
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Innes started the site in 2005, but he never intended to catch wannabe killers. Instead, he was trying to start an internet security business, focussing on web traffic and risk analysis for small businesses and networks, CNN reported.
"'Rent' as in, hire us, 'hit man' as in website traffic and analytics," Innes explained to CNN.
However, this business never took off, so he tried to sell the domain name but didn't get any interest. This was until one day in 2008 when he checked the site's inbox and saw numerous murder-for-hire requests.
"There were emails about 'how much for a hit?' 'are you hiring a hitman?'," Innes said. "I didn't know how to respond, frankly, so I shut the email inbox and walked away for a couple of years."
Then in 2010, Innes was responsible for saving the lives of three people who someone was trying to kill. A British woman in Canada had sent Innes the names and addresses of those she wanted dead, but instead of carrying out the hit, he contacted the police.
"She wanted to get even. She was gonna stop at nothing," Innes said to CNN. "I reached out to a friend who was a sergeant and said, 'I think this lady is serious, can we request a welfare check?" The friend notified Canadian authorities."
The woman was eventually arrested, served a few months behind bars, and was deported.
"That was my first case. I said, 'This $9.20 website has just prevented three murders.' That was the turning point for the website," Innes told CNN.
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Nowadays, Innes has a method to his madness. He shared that about 10% of the forms people submit are real. But, before he contacts authorities to let them know, he gives people 24 hours to cool off.
However, when it comes to Wein's case, she confirmed that she wanted a killer, and Innes turned her information over to Michigan State Police.
While she thought she was going to meet an assassin in a South Rockwood parking lot just south of Detroit, she was actually meeting a state trooper in plainclothes, authorities said.
Wein reportedly offered to pay the trooper $5,000 to kill her ex-husband, giving them his address, place of work, and schedule. Police shared that she gave the fake hitman a $200 down payment for travel expenses, with her husband living in another state, and then she was arrested.
Last month she pleaded guilty to the charges of solicitation for murder and use of a computer to commit a crime. Now she is facing nine years in prison at her sentencing scheduled for January, Sgt. Michael Peterson of the Michigan State Police reported.
"What stood out the most about this case was the foolishness of the suspect ... attempting to hire a hitman from a website," Peterson told CNN.
