She tried to answer the questions as truthfully as she could. After all she might be working with these people sometime in the near future. She didn’t want them thinking she was one of them so she came clean and put ‘none’ by the heading ‘Experience’. In a prophetic flash, she put down ‘none yet’ beside ‘Criminal Record’. She didn’t want to sound too virtuous though, you never knew with these Americans, so beside ‘Skills’, a category which covered firearms, explosives, poisons, martial arts or torture she volunteered a skill with a hand gun.
After a while, when no reply was fired back telling her it was all a legitimate joke, she contacted the site again using the ‘Secure Email’ form. Once again she gave the name Cronin, but this time she provided her mobile number as well as the Lyingeyes address. It was time to put her cards on the table.
‘Two male marks in Ireland, usually together. Make it look like an accident. Then possibly another one within 24 hours, preferably like suicide. Would appreciate a call by return.’
She had taken the bait. Now all ‘Tony Luciano’, the man who ran the site, had to do was reel her in.
Hitmanforhire.net was not an original idea. The internet has always been an ideal breeding place for scams and even more sinister transactions to propagate. In an environment where porn is always around the next corner and the legal and illegal rub shoulders with perfect ease, it’s hardly surprising that the idea of the killer for hire had found its way online. In 2008 the FBI warned about a wide spread email scam in which the conman would announce himself as someone hired to carry out a hit on the unfortunate recipient of the email. This email, which has turned up in inboxes across the States and as far afield as the UK and Australia, would warn against any attempt to contact the law. ‘You are being watched,’ it warned. ‘We will know if you do anything to try and trace us’. Like the ‘Tony Luciano’ scam, a demand is made for money to cancel the hit but this scam lacks the personal touch. While more aggressive than many other so-called phishing scams, the hitman emails are no different from the missives from so-called Lotteries or deposed African dignitaries who need your bank details to shift their millions out of a country. For some people though, the added threat was enough to make them part with thousands and for the emails to spark the attention of the FBI.
Hitmanforhire.net also wasn’t the only site that tried to take the scam to another level. In amongst the joke sites there are one or two that are almost what they seem to be. Like hitmanforhire.net they usually hit the headlines when the people behind them are finally fingered by the law. In 2004 a Vietnamese student came to the attention of the authorities in Seoul when the ‘hitman for hire’ website he had set up to pay off a €1,100 loan became a little too successful. He was arrested after receiving a little over €5,500 from a young woman who wanted her ex and his new girlfriend taken care of. The case had startling similarities to the hitmanforhire.net case, even down to the charges the various parties faced. Given the timing of the 2004 case it’s even possible that the hitmanforhire.net conspirators had been aware of the earlier website, maybe even inspired by it when it made headlines in the States.
The received wisdom garnered from forums and message groups would appear to suggest that anyone actually offering themselves as a killer for hire, anyone who knows what they are doing at least, does not set out their stall in such an obvious fashion. Hitmen do not tend to tout for business with three for two offers. The mercenaries that genuinely offered their services on a Mexican small ads site, for example, were far more matter of fact than the grandiose claims you could find on hitmanforhire.net. They were also a lot cheaper than the $50,000 asking price that was charged. But for Collins and the others who entered into correspondence with ‘Luciano’ skulking around the classifieds just didn’t fit with the image they had of assassins. Collins wasn’t alone in taking the site at face value.
For a site that was so obviously a ‘joke’ the take up rate wasn’t bad. At least two other people had also filled out that application form and only one of them seemed to share Engle’s view that hitmanforhire.net wouldn’t fool anyone. One of them was Private Brian Buckley, a member of the Irish Defence Forces, who thought the site was a joke. When he took the stand in June 2008, Private Buckley seemed perplexed at all the fuss. He told the court room with absolute sincerity that he had never once thought the site was anything other than a joke …even when he started getting phone calls asking him to kill people. When he stumbled across hitmanforhire.net in the summer of 2006, 21-year-old Buckley was living with his mother in Ennis, Co. Clare. Having joined the army at the age of nineteen, Buckley had recently returned from a six month tour of duty in Liberia and was enjoying some time at home. He certainly wasn’t looking for an opportunity for a little bit of moonlighting. Buckley was a clean cut young man with a strong Dublin accent, revealing his Finglas roots. Sitting at the computer in his mother’s house on 29 July he was simply looking for cheat codes to unlock the hidden possibilities of his computer game. Buckley was a fan of the Hitman series of games, the same games Collins would have come across when she searched Yahoo for an affordable assassin. On that summer’s afternoon in 2006 Buckley typed the word ‘hitman’ into his browser. Among the results he got was a website promising the services of a certain ‘Tony Luciano’. Buckley had to have a look.
A cursory look around hitmanforhire.net confirmed his opinion that this was indeed one of the many joke sites that had popped up around cyberspace. As a joke he decided to fill out the application form, just as Collins had done. Unfortunately for Buckley he didn’t come across as a secretary. He was curious to see where the site led so he provided the email address he had created to keep in touch with family and friends while he was away in Liberia: [email protected]. In another attempt at anonymity he created the pseudonym ‘Will Buckimer’ then he got into the spirit of the ‘joke’. Unlike Collins’s somewhat prophetic modesty, Buckley filled in details that exaggerated his abilities and skills. He gave himself an extra two years experience and beefed up his military prowess considerably. For a teenager who had only served with the Irish army on neutral peace keeping duties he volunteered a long list of martial skills, some of which actually existed. According to the application form on hitmanforhire.net, Buckley was a dab hand at ‘handgun, rifle, sub-machine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle, heavy gun, heavy machine gun, grenades, basic booby traps and limited poisons’.
He would later tell the court, full of bored reporters giddy with the heat of the heavy summer afternoon that ‘heavy gun’ and ‘heavy machine gun’ weren’t actually real weapons. Just as well then, that the people on the other end of the website weren’t skilled tacticians and didn’t notice this faux pas. Buckley seemed like a promising applicant with his promise ‘You got work? I’ll do it,’ he even explained that his employment objective was ‘to make money’. But back in the summer of 2006 Buckley filled in the form and forgot about it, the mild curiosity about what the punch line of the bizarre game was could be forgotten as he found the cheat codes and got back to his Hitman game.
However, a little over a week later he got a reply he wasn’t expecting. ‘Tony Luciano’ had sent him a mail.
‘Thanks for your email. Are you available? What’s your phone number? We can contact you. Thanks.
Tony Luciano.’
Buckley was perplexed. As a punch line this wasn’t much good. The sneaking suspicion that the website the other week hadn’t actually been a joke didn’t start nagging just yet. So he replied to the mafia sounding ‘Luciano’ with his real name and mobile number. Then the next day a second email arrived.
‘I have a job for you if you are interested. Two male[s] in Ireland and one in Spain A.S.A.P. Let us know. We will try to call you.
Thanks.
Tony Luciano’
Still Buckley was trying to see the joke. It was an odd one all right. It really wasn’t that funny. Then a couple of days later his phone rang in the middle of the night. Answering the phone in the middle of the night and hearing
a heavily accented male voice introduce itself as Tony, Buckley most likely wondered what was really going on. When the phone rang again, Buckley insisted he didn’t know any Will Buckimer. They must have the wrong number. He didn’t know anything about a ‘Tony Luciano’ or any hitman website. But ‘Luciano’ wasn’t giving up and rang twice more in the middle of that night. Eventually the phone calls stopped. Buckley finally got to sleep and tried not to think anymore about the dodgy characters that hung around odd corners of the internet. He seemed to have got rid of the ‘Luciano’ guy. There were certainly no more calls. Over the next few days, Buckley began to think maybe the joke had been on him all along.
Unknown to him ‘Tony Luciano’ had been busy. By the time he had rung Buckley on 16 August, Collins had been well and truly reeled in and had sent €15,000 in a Fed Ex parcel addressed to Teresa Engle at the home she was now sharing with Essam and Lisa Eid, 6108 Camden Cove Street. The plan was progressing rapidly and by 29 August Engle was ready to fly to Ireland to check out the marks. It was time to contact judas69 again. Buckley finally realised that hitmanforhire.net was not the joke it seemed when he received an email on the day Engle was due to fly out.
‘Hello Brian. Please help us out for this. I need some strong poison. One of us will be there at Shannon 7.20 a.m. tomorrow coming from the States and we can’t ship this stuff for security reason[s]. You know that so please help us out. We will pay and I will owe you a favour. Thanks brother. Tony.’
Buckley did not like what he was hearing and had no intention of doing anything wrong. This was all getting far too dodgy. He stopped answering his phone to the late night calls and didn’t reply to any more emails. The request for poison had made him feel uneasy but he still doubted that he had managed to contact someone who was capable of carrying out a contract killing; after all, he had thought ‘hitman’ was merely a computer game. There was something about that website that just didn’t ring true. He assumed the website was some sort of parody.
Buckley wasn’t alone in thinking hitmanforhire.net was a joke. A search of the various kinds of online chatter from around that time shows that hitmanforhire.net had been noticed in the forums and blogs around the world. Frequently suggested as a humorous solution to the many irritations wandering around cyberspace ‘Tony Luciano’s’ sales pitch was the subject of several discussions arguing whether or not the company behind the Hitman computer game was attempting a bizarre publicity stunt.
But there were others who contacted hitmanforhire.net that never once thought it was a joke. Collins was not the only one who filled out that online application form. There was another shadowy figure who also made contact. He could have been another fantasist or a joker keen to take the gag to its furthest limits but ‘John Smith’ seemed ready to prove the skills with which he had fleshed out in his CV. John Smith called himself ‘No Risk’. When he wrote to ‘Luciano’ in early August 2006 he was confident in his abilities as a poisoner.
‘Tony, accidents happen … to other people. They eat things that don’t agree with them and people die from food poisoning all the time. I have made my own and purchased others—personal favourite is blowfish bladder. My express is CMD with 101st. Tactical removal. Also Nicotine, Dioxine, cyanide or Sarin, depends on the dosage and delivery method as to timing. If you have specific needs please let me now and it WILL happen that way. I didn’t come to the dance to sit and watch, Brother. I want to dance. What do you say?’
On 15 August he suggested a more down to earth prescription option, rather than the outlandish blowfish venom.
‘Ouabain. 0.002 gms of ouabain is a lethal dose fore and [sic] adult human. If you prefer a cardiac glycosidene e.g. digitalis. Slow the heart right down. Increase the cardiac output. Increase the cardiac enlargement and decrease venous pressure by working on the vagus nerve. Painful and effective and I could make it out of Oleander or Milkweed.’
John ‘No Risk’ Smith helpfully provided the correct dosage, which was duly parroted back to Collins as a possible means of dispatching Howard’s two sons. He might even have been a suitable accomplice for Engle’s first trip to Ireland, sounding suitably desperate as he wrote to ‘Luciano’ on 19 August;
‘Tony, I could really use this contract. Call me in the morning. Lets talk it over.’
He sounded almost plaintive when he emailed again.
‘I would like to get this resolved today if that’s possible. I have a personal matter that I need to clear up this weekend. I am not trying to be picky or seem impatient. I am ready to go and as I said I would like to clear up an issue I have. Call me or email me your reply.’
‘Luciano’ did get back to him. This was a relationship that both sides were keen to develop in a professional way.
‘Ok Brother, I have to give you this but can you do it for $10,000 plus expenses. We will pay you the ticket and give you $2,000 dollars expenses for two days in Ireland. I will take the other guy out and I will take the last for the money that I had home. Can you do it or not? No neg if yes or no, let me know. If yes you have to go there Friday, August 25th and the job will be done by Saturday, August 26th. Let us know. I will take care of you next time. Please. Thanks. Tony.’
But ‘Smith’ wasn’t impressed with the fee. If he had known the figure that ‘Luciano’ had hammered out with Collins he would have been even more reluctant.
‘Well Tony. Send the boys and call me Saturday around noon some time. We can work out the details then. 10 stick a little shorter than I expected but I will take you at your word. Give me all details in the business. I will talk to you soon.’
He reminded ‘Luciano’;
‘Our job makes trust difficult. Don’t want unwelcome visitors at my door you understand. Call me, let’s talk or tell me what exactly you need.’
But in the end helpful ‘Smith’ did not join Engle in Ireland and the conspirators decided to try some home brew poisons of their own. ‘John Smith’ himself faded back into the shadows of cyberspace. He was not a witness in the trial of Sharon Collins and Essam Eid.
So hitmanforhire.net was ticking over nicely and had succeeded in attracting the attention of some very interested customers. Until the conspirators decided to dabble in a bit of practical chemistry, hitmanforhire.net was in position as an almost perfect con. If Engle and Eid had satisfied themselves with corresponding with the desperate women who had contacted the website they could have made a pretty satisfactory turn over. As a scam, the hitman website was almost perfect. The best mark, after all, is the one with the most to lose. Who would dare to blow the whistle to the cops when it would mean admitting a plot to dispatch their nearest and dearest? If those behind the website had been content with simply gathering enough money from deposits, they wouldn’t even have to leave their house, never mind carry out a hit. But the gamblers saw a chance to win twice and so their scam came crashing down around them. While the person arranging the hit might be slow to come forward and admit they had been scammed, the supposed target has no similar constraint. Eid and Engle made this mistake both times someone approached the hitmanforhire.net website, for Collins was not the only one who came looking for someone to be bumped off.
While Collins was flirting with ‘Luciano’ and whispering sweet nothings during late night phone calls as she plotted her inheritance, somebody else had come looking for psychopathic expert help. Eid and Engle ended up double jobbing, getting caught for one job just days before they set off to confront Robert and Niall Howard.
Marissa Mark had come across hitmanforhire.net while trawling through the internet just like Collins. Marissa had been getting over a break up when she stumbled upon hitmanforhire.net which promised to be ‘the perfect solution’. She would tell her ex when he phoned her wanting to know why a strange couple had just turned up threatening to shoot his new girlfriend in the head that she too had thought hitmanforhire.net was a joke and had put the unfortunate love rival’s details in just for a laugh.
Even though no one was charged with conspiring
to murder anyone in this particular case, the similarities with what was going on in Ireland at much the same time are striking. Eid and Engle took a contract forged through hitmanforhire.net and decided to maximise their profits. Just as they demanded money in late September 2006 from Robert Howard they approached the woman Marissa had joked about having killed and asked her to buy herself out of the contract.
CHAPTER 6:
CALIFORNIA OR BUST
When Marissa Mark contacted hitmanforhire.net she was looking for someone to heal the pain of a break-up.[1] It was almost a year since she had broken up with her boyfriend of three years, Joshua. When she had heard he’d left Pennsylvania to try his luck in show business and had moved in with his new girlfriend, she was upset. She didn’t mind if Joshua wanted to be a singer. She’d never stood in his way. Even after they split up she would go and see him perform in his stage persona as ‘Monte Carlo’. She’d even travelled all the way to Philadelphia to watch him record. But moving away into the arms of another woman? That hurt.
The Devil in the Red Dress Page 6
