A US woman faces prison after trying to hire a murderer through a fake website

(CNN) – Wendy Wein wanted her ex-husband dead.

In July 2020, the woman from Michigan, United States, came across a website, Rent-A-Hitman, which promised to “handle your delicate situation” privately and in a timely manner.

The site boasts nearly 18,000 field agents who can do a job anywhere in the US Features testimonials from satisfied clients, including a man who wrote that RentAHitman “handled my disgruntled employee problem promptly while I was out of business. the vacation town “.

So Wein filled out a form on the site, requesting a consultation for his problem.

“It’s a little weird that your company isn’t on the deep or dark web,” she wrote in a message to a man she believed to be the site’s chief consultant, Guido Fanelli. CNN obtained a copy of the message. “I prefer not to go to prison,” he added. “Thanks for your time”.

That didn’t stop Wein from later offering to pay $ 5,000 to have her husband killed.

But there was a problem.

Guido Fanelli is actually Bob Innes, a man from California who runs the website. Rent-A-Hitman “agents” have never killed anyone. Instead, the site exists to fool people who are looking for hit men.

And Wein now faces prison, one of several Rent-A-Hitman “clients” who have been convicted of using the site to solicit murder.

Site owner hands over murderous “clients” to police

What started out as a website for an internet security business has accidentally become an online decoy for people looking to have their enemies killed. Your service requests go to Innes, who hands over serious inquiries to law enforcement authorities.

Innes, who lives in Fairfield, California, says she has left red flags all over her website hinting that this is a scam. For starters, the website openly suggests that it offers illegal services. Her false testimonies include that of a woman who is “ready to get involved” after catching her husband cheating on him with a babysitter.

Its 18,000 “field agents” are the estimated number of law enforcement agencies nationwide. At the bottom of the site, a link to check if your credit card has been stolen takes users to Internet Crime Complaint Center of the FBI.

And the site promises confidentiality under the “Hitman Information Privacy and Protection Act of 1964,” an ironic nod to HIPAA, the real-life Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, passed in 1996 and protecting the medical information of patients.

But some people continue to fall into the trap, filling in online forms with their real name, contact information, and details about who they want to be “controlled.”

Innes claims that more than 400 people have filled out service request forms on the site since its launch, including some who expressed an interest in becoming hitmen and also people who were trying to prank their friends. Of those, about 10% became legitimate cases involving the police, he says.

“I thought no one could be that stupid, but boy was I wrong,” says 54-year-old Innes. “These people … whoever they are, they see HIPAA and think about privacy. So they feel compelled to leave their real information: names, address, where is the intended target …”.

Give people 24 hours to calm down before alerting authorities

If a person fills out a form on your site and explicitly seeks someone to be killed, Innes will wait 24 hours before contacting the police.

“It’s kind of a cool-down period, to come to their senses. I want to give people a chance to get away,” he says. “After a day, I ask them two questions. Do they still need our services? Do you want us to put you in touch with a field agent?”

If they answer yes to both, Innes puts them in touch with a law enforcement agency in their area, which handles communications with the suspect. Innes never talks about fees, she leaves that to the “field agents.”

“I’m just matching with the police,” he says. “I’d rather be a state witness than a state conspirator.”

When Wein, the Michigan woman, confirmed after 24 hours that she still wanted to hire a killer, Innes gave her information to the Michigan State Police. They sent a state policeman, posing as a plainclothes hitman, to meet her at a parking lot from South Rockwood, south of Detroit.

The police said that Wein offered to pay the policeman US $ 5,000 for killing her ex-husband and provided him with her home address, workplace and hours. State police told CNN that she gave the officer a $ 200 advance for travel expenses because her ex-husband lived in another state.

Wein was arrested and pleaded guilty last month of the charges of solicitation of murder and use of a computer to commit a crime. He faces up to nine years in prison on his sentence, scheduled for January, says Sgt. Michael Peterson of the Michigan State Police, who led the case.

“What attracted the most attention in this case was the foolishness of the suspect … in trying to hire a hit man from a website,” says Peterson.

The site’s first serious case involved a solicited murder against 3 people

Innes says he never intended to catch potential killers when he launched the website in 2005. He was trying to start an internet security business, focused on web traffic and risk analysis for small networks.

“‘Rent’ like hiring us, ‘hit man’ like website traffic and analytics,” he says.

His internet security business never took off, so he tried to sell the domain name. There wasn’t much interest from buyers so he forgot about it and left it idle for years.

Then one day in 2008, he checked the site’s inbox and was stunned.

“There were emails about ‘How much does a murder cost?’, ‘Do you hire a hit man?'” Innes says. “I didn’t know how to respond, frankly, so I closed my email inbox and walked away for a couple of years.”

Two years later, another murder-for-hire request arrived in his inbox.

“I got an email from a woman saying she needed three people killed,” says Innes. “A few hours later, he sent a second email with the names and addresses of the people he wanted killed.”

The woman told Innes that she was a British citizen living in Ontario, Canada, and that the three people she wanted to kill had stolen her father’s inheritance.

Innes says he looked up some of the addresses she provided, and her information seemed to prove it.

“She wanted revenge. She wasn’t going to stop at anything,” he says. “I contacted a friend who was a sergeant and said, ‘I think this lady is serious, can we request a wellness check?’ The friend tipped off the Canadian authorities.”

The woman was arrested and served a few months in prison for requesting a murder and then deported to the UK, Innes says.

“That was my first case. I said, ‘This $ 9.20 website just prevented three murders.’ That was the turning point for the website,” adds Innes.

So he turned the site into what he calls an “exaggerated parody,” including the false HIPAA statement and special discount package deals for groups and seniors.

“Rent-A-Hitman is secure and available right here on the World Wide Web,” says the site, which promises to be “your point & click solution.”

Another man tried to use the website to kidnap a child

Innes’s website also led to the conviction of a Virginia man who tried to hire someone to kill his ex-girlfriend and her parents in 2018.

The man, Devon Fauber, has a mental disability and told an officer posing as a hit man that he wanted to kill all three relatives so he could care for his ex-girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter, according to a report from The News Leader of Staunton, Virginia.

“Make sure you kill them and don’t kill the baby,” Fauber wrote in his online petition for a hitman, Innes says. Fauber also asked that the girl, along with her birth certificate, be abducted from her Staunton home, according to Innes.

Court records show Fauber was sentenced in 2019 to 10 years in prison for solicitation to commit murder.

Despite the publicity such cases bring to her website, Innes says she still receives requests online from people wanting to hire a hitman. Some come from abroad, asking if he can organize a coup in a specific country.

Innes never advertises her website, so she thinks people probably find her through online searches. Innes says that analysis of her website shows that it has been viewed in 160 countries.

“It’s absolutely mind-blowing,” he says.

Innes points out that she is now trying to educate people about the dangers of the internet and calling for tougher laws for people convicted of using the internet to commit violent crimes.

“It is a work in progress, but if there is a legislator, internet security group or anyone else who wants to help with this project, we would greatly appreciate it,” he says.

In the meantime, he will continue to match the murderous clients and the police.