RentAHitman dot com is not a hitman service. It never was.

And yet, it has helped put multiple people in prison for trying to have someone murdered.

This episode breaks down how a fake website became one of the most effective accidental crime traps on the internet.

It starts in 2005 with Bob Innes, a former police academy graduate working in IT. He buys a domain name for a potential tech business. The word “hit” refers to web traffic and security testing. The business never launches. The inbox does.

For years, messages come in. Most are nonsense. Some are disturbing. He ignores them.

Then in 2010, one email is different. A woman in Canada sends full names and addresses of family members in the UK and asks for them to be killed over an inheritance dispute. It is specific. It is credible. Police are called. She is arrested, convicted, and sent to prison.

After that, Innes redesigns the site as an obvious parody. Fake testimonials. Ridiculous claims. Made-up regulatory language. Everything about it screams not real.

People still submit requests.

We explain how the site works today. The screening process. The cooling-off period. The moment where law enforcement gets looped in. By 2021, around 700 serious inquiries had come through. Many led to investigations. Multiple ended in convictions.

Then we talk about what this looks like in real life.

We break down the undercover recording of Dalia Dippolito calmly confirming she wants her husband killed, on tape, to a man she believes is a hitman. That video becomes the backbone of one of the most infamous murder-for-hire cases in the US.

And finally, we walk through the case of Valerie McDaniel and Leon Jacob. A story involving obsession, escalation, undercover officers, staged murder photos, a suicide, and a life sentence. No hypotheticals. No internet jokes. Real people. Real consequences.

This episode is about intent. About how often people cross that line. And how sometimes, shockingly, the internet catches them first.