04 February 2023 , 00:53
818
0
A man, who exchanged naked photos and videos with a 13-year-old girl, paid $20,000 in Bitcoin to have her killed before finally calling off the plan.
John Michael Musbach, 31, from New Jersey, faces up to 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to using commerce facilities in a murder-for-hire plot on Thursday, according to federal prosecutors.
The defendant began communicating online with the 13-year-old girl from New York, where they shared explicit images, in the summer of 2015.
Musbach gradually used the chats to request and receive the sexually explicit videos and photographs of the girl and to send her similar videos and images of himself.
But the girl's parents discovered what was happening, and the nature of the chats, and notified local law enforcement officers in New York state.
Man in 30s dies after being stabbed in park sparking police probe
Musbach paid $20,000 in Bitcoin in the murder-for-hire plot (Getty Images/Westend61)He was arrested in March 2016 and eventually pleaded guilty to child endangerment in October 2017. He received a two-year suspended prison sentence and was placed on lifetime parole.
But in May 2016, Musbach had started communicating with the administrator of a murder-for-hire site on the dark web, while his criminal case was pending, officials have said.
After asking if the girl was too young to target and being told the age wasn't a problem, prosecutors said Musbach paid approximately $20,000 in Bitcoin for the hit to take place on the girl.
But when he was pressed for an additional $5,000 to secure the hit, Musbach eventually sought to cancel and also asked for a refund of the $20,000 he had spent.
At this point the website's administrator then revealed that the site was a scam and threatened to reveal Musbach's information to law enforcement.
Federal prosecutors did not specify Thursday how then the plot came to be uncovered by the police.
But during his indictment in 2020, prosecutors said an informant gave the Department of Homeland Security messages between Musbach and the fake website for contract killings.
Musbach will be sentenced for the murder-for-hire plot on June 13, prosecutors said.