About

Introduction

I’m Chris Monteiro, a cybersecurity specialist by day and dark-web researcher by night. What began as writing niche Wikipedia cybercrime articles in 2015, has led to me spending almost 10 years fighting a persistant scam market place for murder, and becoming morally obligated to become a one-man specialist international investigations agency.

The Beginning

In 2015 I was writing the history of the dark web, carding and darknet markets for Wikipedia, due to the volume of rumour and misinformation in the area. The area had a life of it’s own, with fake infographics, YouTubers and outright scam websites looking to part a fool from their Bitcoin around escaped AIs, live streamed murders in ‘Red Rooms’, and of course you could access ‘anything’ on the dark web - why not murder for hire also?

[ Note - “Silk Road'“ darknet market founder Ross Ulbright did indeed pay to have five people killed, and it’s a disgrace to the US DOJ that he was never prosecuted for this, and even received a presidential pardon]

In early 2016, I encountered Besa Mafia, a dark-web “hitman for hire” site that seemed slicker than most scams—but scam it was. It offered contract killings via Bitcoin with messaging systems and professional façades, but my research quickly made the truth clear: the whole thing was a con designed to steal money from people desperate or dangerous enough to believe. I published my findings on my blog, pirate.london.

Thhe article didn’t go unnoticed. The operator of Besa Mafia, known as “Yura,” hired one of his ‘hitman’ applicants to create sinister video, featuring my blog’s domain held up on a sheet of paper, followed by a burning car as a threat.

The Scam Site Has 'Real' Murder Orders

How I then accessed the website's order data is a story for another time.

However even though the site was a scam, I was able to access the orders, and see that real people were placing real murder orders to have real people killed, often paying real money, in the thousands or ten's of thousands of USD.

Thoughout 2016 I attempted without luck to engage the UK and US authorities, compiling a the first prioritised "Kill List" of significant cases where people appeared to be in real danger.

Framed for Murder

Yura, unhappy with his website being publicly mocked, and debunked on numerous occasions, paid a search engine optimisation (SEO) freelancer to write short articles alledging that I was in fact running the website.

In late 2016, the US in Minnesota, a user on Besa Mafia placed an order to kill “Amy Allwine.” The hit never happened—but her husband murdered her himself when the scam failed to deliver.

In the UK, the NCA (National Crime Agency) were spurred into action, and arrested me for allegedly organising this murder, fooled by poorly-written blog articles. After a 2 month investigation into the site leading to just 3x known arrests, they gave up, and allowed the site to return to it's scamming without acting on any of the existing data I provided.

Collaborations

Due to a mix of confusion, indifference and hostility from law enforcement, I have been forced to engage journalists and volunteers from around the world to initiate investigations into these murder for hire plots.

In 2018 I appeared on US TV crime series 48 Hours, and more significantly from 2020-2024 drove the 'Kill List' podcast.

This work has been entirely self-funded. It has cost me thousands of hours and significant personal expense—covering everything for my research archives to the custom software and infrastructure needed to gather and preserve evidence. There’s no grant, no official salary, just the conviction that "trying to murder people is bad actually".

Uninvestigated Cases

If you believe in this mission and want to help, there are two key ways: donate to support ongoing investigations, or get involved by sharing skills—whether technical, legal, or journalistic—to strengthen the work. Every contribution helps keep the pressure on those who hide in the shadows of the internet.

The fight against these scams is far from over, but as long as there are people willing to look, listen, and act, we can stay one step ahead.

My cat is actually pro-murder, but she is a cat so cannot be judged by human moral standards