Tennessee Airman Busted By FBI After Applying To Be Real Hitman On Parody Website Site "RentAHitman.com"
From NBC News:
An Air National Guardsman was arrested and charged Thursday with applying to be a hitman on a parody website, officials say.
Josiah Ernesto Garcia, 21, of Tennessee, came across www.rentahitman.com as he was searching for contract mercenary jobs to support his family, the U.S. attorney’s office for Middle Tennessee said in a statement. The website was created in 2005 and to advertise a cybersecurity startup, but when it failed, it would get inquiries for hitman services — so its administrator converted it to a parody site with false testimonials from people who claimed to have used its services, the criminal complaint says.
Via RENT-A-HITMAN.COM:
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Garcia applied on the website for work as a hitman in February, submitting identification documents and a résumé, as well as "indicating he was an expert marksman," earning him the nickname "Reaper," and was "employed in the Air National Guard since July 2021," according to the U.S. attorney's office.
Garcia continued to follow up on the website for about a month — submitting even more identifying information, including his home address and a head shot — and eventually agreed to kill someone for $5,000 in a conversation with an undercover FBI agent, according to the criminal complaint.
In the end, the undercover FBI agent asked Garcia to meet him in a park in Hendersonville, TN, where Garcia was provided with a kit of information about the intended 'hit', along with a $2.5K down payment. There's no doubt in my mind that Garcia never felt cooler in his life than he did in that moment, but it quickly came crashing down. The moment he agreed (& offered to send a picture of the dead body) he was promptly arrested. Now he's facing up to 10 years in prison.
Worth noting, if you go to the RENT-A-HITMAN.COM website, they've updated their field office location to the spot where Garcia was arrested.
Between this Garcia fella & Jack Teixeira - the guy responsible for a massive leak of DoD info/classified docs because he tried to impress his discord group chat buddies - the Air National Guard is having quite the month. To hear more about both of these stories, drama in the SEAL community and other news, check out the latest ZeroBlog30: