Join me to hear the story of how medical doctor James Wan tried to hire an assassin from the dark web to kill his baby’s mama. This is eCrimeBytes.com Season 3 Episode 5 – Dr. James “Murder For Hire” Wan.
Sources:
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/doctor-sentenced-dark-web-murder-hire-plot
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67654261/united-states-v-wan/
- https://allongeorgia.com/georgia-public-safety/georgia-doctor-sentenced-in-dark-web-murder-for-hire-plot/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BGZ8hcSyCU
Transcript:
00:00:10:00 – 00:00:41:00
Keith
What’s up, you crazy bastards. Welcome to another week of eCrimeBytes. This is where I research the court documentation and roast the criminal so you don’t have to. All right, so this week I’m bringing you season three, episode number five, and in episode number five is about a doctor named James Wan. And James, well, he tried to hire somebody to murder his baby mama that was living with him at the time.
00:00:41:11 – 00:01:07:09
Keith
And when I say doctor, I mean a medical doctor. All right. Not the not the type of doctor that I am, but a real honest to God medical doctor here. So we’re talking about a medical doctor that tried to hire somebody to murder his baby mama. It’s just unbelievable. So stick around. I’m going to tell you all the details here of the crime that he ends up getting charged with at the end is actually the technical name.
00:01:07:09 – 00:01:28:55
Keith
And I thought, this is interesting. I’ll read it once for you. And then from now on, I’m just going to say murder for hire. But use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire. So from now on, I’m just going to say a murder for hire. This is what he’s caught and charged with and it’s I say amazing as an insanity
00:01:28:59 – 00:01:53:39
Keith
sense of amazing. But it’s amazing that he tried to do this or any anybody tries to do this. So why did I pick this case? Murder for hire cases on the Internet, to me are just interesting to begin with. But then if you roll on top of that, a doctor who’s not supposed to be, I mean, they give an oath not to hurt anybody, ever.
00:01:53:44 – 00:01:59:40
Keith
And he’s clearly going out there trying to hurt somebody. So that was the reason why I picked this case.
00:01:59:40 – 00:02:18:23
Keith
So what I’m going to do is I’m gonna put a picture of Dr. Wan on your screen right now, you know, youngish individual for audio listeners. He’s just, you know, Asian, bald. I mean, there’s got a goatee, nothing real, nothing that stands out about him.
00:02:18:23 – 00:02:29:22
Keith
If you saw him in the crowd, he wouldn’t say, hey, this is a guy that would hire somebody to murder his baby mama. You would not. You would not look at him and think this. I’ll tell you that much.
00:02:29:22 – 00:02:37:36
Keith
So what happened here? Okay, well, first of all, we’re not going to get too much into his whole doctor background.
00:02:37:36 – 00:02:59:43
Keith
He’s a medical doctor of certain, you know, medical topics. I believe it was some type of vein vascular type of medicine. That’s not really important here. All you really need to know is he’s a medical doctor, so he’s not supposed… he takes an oath not to be hurting people. And you would think, you know, his whole life would be dedicated to not hurting people.
00:02:59:43 – 00:03:24:37
Keith
So here there is a day, a May 11th of 2022, and the FBI receives a tip that someone with the username of jwan spelled j w a n and that a really long number. I’m not even going to read the number to you because it looks random and it doesn’t matter.
00:03:24:41 – 00:03:51:50
Keith
Yes, I know you probably pause there, just like I’m pausing there. He used his name and his last name. Okay. Keep this in mind. Okay. His name is in the username. I’m gonna continue on with the sentence now. It says he solicited a that account, a solicited a murder for hire services via the Darkweb marketplace. And they didn’t specify what dark web marketplace it was.
00:03:51:50 – 00:04:17:45
Keith
I’m not familiar with them, so I couldn’t even begin to tell you which one I think it is. I’m just going to call it the Dark Web or the forum or the marketplace from here on out. Don’t even worry about what the forum is. He’s this account, this jwan, some number account is out there now posting, trying to solicit somebody to do a murder for hire scenario.
00:04:17:50 – 00:04:36:26
Keith
Yeah. And jwan, I mean, he didn’t even listen. C’mon. My name is Keith Jones. And if I’m going on the dark web and I want to off my spouse, I’m not going to put it K Jones and some big number. I’m going to try to pick something that’s completely the opposite of K Jones. I’m not even going to pick a person’s name.
00:04:36:26 – 00:04:55:34
Keith
Probably. I’m going to call. I’m going to call myself, you know, suspicious package or something like that, that it just would not make sense to somebody looking at going, yeah, that’s Keith Jones, This guy, he used his name. Now, if you don’t know what the dark web is, don’t worry. There’s just a tiny little bit about this.
00:04:55:34 – 00:05:28:04
Keith
You need to know the dark web is it’s well, it’s kind of like the Wild West. You can pretty much get anything there. You can buy drugs. You can buy hitmen, which is why Dr. Wan is there. And, you know, and basically anything you want and it’s it’s you don’t go to it with your normal web browser. There’s this like this special web browser, this Tor web browser is built to ah, that you, you know, you pop it up on your screen and it looks like a normal web browser.
00:05:28:04 – 00:05:49:57
Keith
But the way it works is it goes through this special network that gets encrypted and a whole bunch of stuff behind the scenes. So that is the dark web, that browser that I told you about this Tor browser. This comes up in this case and this is why I’m talking about this now, is because it does pop up in the case later on.
00:05:50:01 – 00:06:11:03
Keith
So according to the anonymous tip, and already when I was reading the research in here, I was like, Who the fuck is giving an anonymous tip? Is it the hitman? Is it another person trying to hire a hitman? Is it the forum admin? Who is it? I will tell you in a minute. It’s. It’ll become important later on.
00:06:11:08 – 00:06:30:22
Keith
So according to this tip, this user jwan, which is not doctor Wan by any means, he placed an order. Okay. And I’m going to keep saying in this order over and over, this is the assassination order. This is his hit order that he placed on this forum.
00:06:30:22 – 00:06:45:51
Keith
So we had a specific person that he wanted killed, too. And we don’t have the person’s name. We’re just going to call them the victim. Or I might say, baby mama just kind of jokingly and I don’t mean to joke about the victim, this asshole that tried to have her killed.
00:06:45:51 – 00:07:16:12
Keith
Yeah, I’m. I’m going to joke about. So what happened is you went out there and says, I want this person, which is the baby mama, the victim killed in exchange for Bitcoin, which is this cryptocurrency. And if you’re not familiar with that, don’t worry. It’s just a virtual online way of paying for things discreetly. Now I say discreetly, meaning you would hope you couldn’t be traced this case.
00:07:16:12 – 00:07:36:59
Keith
It is so stick around. I will tell you that in a minute. But he thought he was paying for a hit using an untraceable currency. That’s what you need to take away from this conversation. So he would pay somebody some Bitcoin, which would be actual money. They would get it, they would kill the person and they would go.
00:07:36:59 – 00:08:00:02
Keith
Now, the way I read it, it’s it’s not like you pay a person and kind of hope that they would kill them. You it’s kind of like a real estate transaction where you put money into an escrow and then I think maybe the hit happens and then the escrow get gets released. The court documents kept saying it was in escrow, so it wasn’t just given to the quote unquote, killers.
00:08:00:06 – 00:08:19:11
Keith
I think maybe it was put into escrow for somebody to claim, like maybe a a killer to go, I’ll do the job. It was kind of very vague in the court documentation. So I was trying to connect the dots as much as I could in my mind. So the victim lives in Georgia, and I’m not going to tell you what city it is.
00:08:19:11 – 00:09:02:06
Keith
It’s just a victim in Georgia that he identified. The tip also says this jwan user account was definitely not Dr. Wan, this jwan user account on the dark web made approximately two Bitcoin payments worth $16,000 on this marketplace on April 18th and April 21st of 2022. So just a couple of years ago. Now, this is the point where I tell you about the whole cryptocurrency and tracing so normal money, you know, investigators are pretty good about tracing the money trail, right?
00:09:02:06 – 00:09:28:11
Keith
I mean, it’s like use credit cards and checks and even cash in some scenarios, they can they can trace it to you. On the Internet, the most quote unquote, untraceable type of currency that’s out there would be cryptocurrency. And it’s because it’s held by just account numbers. And as long as you don’t attach those account numbers to people, it’s untraceable.
00:09:28:24 – 00:09:57:32
Keith
Right. So if I have this account number out there that could send money to this other account number, I couldn’t tell what’s going on in theory. Right. Well, because these transfers happen, the investigators have the account numbers. Okay? So they think of these as like, I’ll be saying things like wallet. These are the account numbers that I’m talking about so they know who the senders and recipients are.
00:09:57:36 – 00:10:17:55
Keith
So they do what investigators do and they look and they find that one of the wallets was actually a part of Coinbase, which is one of the cryptocurrency providers out there. So if you want to buy Bitcoin, one of the providers you could go to to buy Bitcoin is Coinbase and then you could take that Bitcoin and transfer it to somebody else.
00:10:18:00 – 00:10:42:18
Keith
So when the investigators saw where the Bitcoin came from, they traced it back and it came back to Coinbase and they said, okay, well we got the first dot, let’s go to the next step. And they went up to Coinbase and I’m, if you haven’t followed my episodes, you know that I paraphrase a lot here and I just kind of joke about it, but they basically walked up and they were like, Hey, who the fuck was using this wallet number?
00:10:42:23 – 00:11:03:00
Keith
There was a big, big court process behind the scenes. The cops can’t just walk in and figure out who’s behind any account number. Okay. But story wise, that’s what happened, right? They went through the court process, they went to Coinbase and they said, Hey, who the fuck is this? And Coinbase looks at this and goes, this is one of our customers, Dr. James Wan.
00:11:03:05 – 00:11:33:05
Keith
And I bet you the investigators looked at the username of jwan and looked at the Coinbase account of James Wan and were like, Could this guy really use his fucking name on the the Darkweb when he was trying to hire a hitman? Really? Because that’s what I thought. That’s what I thought when I read this. My God. So when the investigators did that whole process, they found out other information like, what other transactions happened through this Coinbase account.
00:11:33:09 – 00:12:03:39
Keith
And they found that there were actually four transactions associated with this whole hit man hire, you know, murder for hire plot that I’m bringing to you. Right. Wasn’t just one wasn’t just two, it was four transactions. And there’s a reason for these four transactions. I wondered. I was like, Why? Why didn’t he just pay once? So the first payment, the first payment, apparently he sent it to escrow.
00:12:03:39 – 00:12:27:26
Keith
Now, depending on which document I read, it kind of varied. It sounded like maybe he sent it to the wrong wallet, which means it would be like paying a different vendor. You know, if I were meant to pay Amazon, but I accidentally paid Walmart. That’s that’s the scenario here cryptocurrency wise, where he sent it to a wrong spot.
00:12:27:30 – 00:12:59:55
Keith
Right. That’s that’s one possibility. The other possibility is another part of the court documents where I read and one said, I think I was scammed. I think both of them are equally plausible because Doctor Wan he used his name on the dark web in his username, so maybe he did send it to another wallet accidentally. But the important thing here is he lost $8,000 with this transfer.
00:12:59:55 – 00:13:24:05
Keith
So his first transfer was $8,000 and April 18th. And it didn’t even go to this whole murder for hire plot, didn’t even work. So then basically, I guess, like to paraphrase the communications with the administrative staff of this murder for hire forum, he said, Hey, did you get my money? And they are like no, and he’s like, shit.
00:13:24:05 – 00:13:50:40
Keith
Well, I guess I lost $8,000. What’s the wallet again? They gave it to him and then he sent the second one, which is $8,000. And this is on April 21st of 2022, same year. And then later on they weren’t specific, but then later on there was another transfer of about $8,000. It was on April 29th of 2022, and I think it was like the other half of the hit.
00:13:50:45 – 00:14:19:58
Keith
They weren’t specific about the transfer. They just said that there was another $8,000 payment into the escrow. So now he’s sitting on about $16,000 in his hitman escrow waiting for somebody to help him out and bump off his baby mama. Now, as you can imagine, cryptocurrency doesn’t stay at the same price. It goes up and down. And apparently during that time, it went down and then it wasn’t at, you know, 15, $16,000.
00:14:19:58 – 00:14:46:12
Keith
So he put more money into it to bring it back up. And so he put about 1200 dollars. So at the end of the day, he put about almost $25,000 into this escrow. Some of it he lost, some of it was to cover Bitcoin going down, all just to have a $15,000 payment to off his baby mama.
00:14:46:12 – 00:15:19:07
Keith
Okay, so the agents do an open source search. So that’s another fancy way of just saying like a Google search, right? You could do things like James Wan and then look at maybe his public profile and see he is in a relationship with so-and-so. They did that process generically. I didn’t see I don’t mean like they did that exact thing that I just described, but something like that where they went out there on Google did an open source search, found some stuff and they said huh James Wan
00:15:19:07 – 00:15:51:22
Keith
and this victim that’s listed in here, that’s coming through the tip that is his baby mama. They’re actually they are they are connected. And they they have a young daughter together. They’re currently in a romantic relationship and they’re living together at this address that he used for his assassination order on the hitman forum. So at the end of the day, investigators started, you know, they put the pieces together and they’re like, yeah, this is not bullshit.
00:15:51:22 – 00:16:00:16
Keith
This is you know, this looks like he really does have a relationship. This person is real and he’s putting money out there for somebody to assassinate her
00:16:00:16 – 00:16:12:55
Keith
So then. I don’t even know how to I don’t even know how to ease into this one. Okay, I May 14th of 2022, the agents learned that the victim. Okay, the baby mama.
00:16:12:59 – 00:16:36:16
Keith
And I apologize. Baby Mama if you’re watching this, I’m just trying to use. I don’t wanna keep saying the victim, but baby mama kind of fit here. So Wan’s baby mama was there, investigators learned that she is there with him because he broke his ankles. So I stopped all the research and I was like, Why the fuck does he have broken ankles?
00:16:36:21 – 00:17:00:41
Keith
Was it an angry hit man. There are so many explanations already. He’s already trying to hire a hitman. There are so many explanations of why this man could have probably have broken his ankles. He used his name as a username on the dark web, so he didn’t hide himself, so he didn’t seem real bright there. So you would think maybe he was doing something not bright at home, fell off a ladder and broke his ankles.
00:17:00:46 – 00:17:24:24
Keith
Who knows? But he broke his ankles, was getting treatment. So the agents went to the hospital and they interviewed the the victim and they said, where do you live? And she confirmed the home address. And they looked at the assassination order and they’re like, okay, how do you know James Wan? And she’s like, I’ve known him for like nine years.
00:17:24:24 – 00:17:41:47
Keith
And we have a daughter together and we’ve been dating and they’re looking at that, you know, they’re looking at the hitman list and checking that off like, okay, can you tell us anything else about your relationship? She’s like, Yeah, you know, I said that our relationship was, you know, is nine years, but actually we’ve been arguing a lot lately.
00:17:41:47 – 00:18:00:51
Keith
Just the last few months. We’ve been arguing a lot lately hasn’t been on good terms. But, you know, it’s just it is what it is. Everybody’s relationships shitty, right? You know, it’s just it it is what it is. Investigators probably looked at their list again, haven’t told her that she’s part of the assassination attempt, I imagine. And they’re like, okay.
00:18:00:55 – 00:18:42:53
Keith
Shit. So they said, Have you noticed anything different recently about Dr. Wan? And they said, she said, Yeah, yeah, I noticed he’d been drinking in his office with coworkers, so I reported him to his work. Maybe that’s why he was upset with me. And this is the point where Dr. Wan, he must. I think he thought if he realized he was going to do this, this murder for hire plot, because it’s sounded like she started remembering weird things that he did that normal, significant others don’t do.
00:18:42:53 – 00:19:05:48
Keith
Like I don’t do this to my wife. I made a joke, but I don’t do this under normal circumstances of my wife like take a video of her car and then not only just be like, Hey, wife, take a here. I’m doing this for the kids. No, no, no. Take a video of her car, then zoom in on the license plate as if maybe just tell somebody this is what type of car she drives.
00:19:05:53 – 00:19:30:38
Keith
This is her you know, this is how you identify it with the license plate, she said. Also, I remember this private locked browser on his phone called an Onion browser, and it could only be accessed with facial recognition. Now, I’m going to pause here for a second. If you remember earlier I talked about this Tor browser. That’s the same thing.
00:19:30:38 – 00:19:52:32
Keith
That’s the Onion browser. It’s all the same thing that gets you on to the dark web. So what she just said is when she saw his phone, there was a thing called the Onion browser, which would get you on the dark web. So it’s another thing where the investigators look at this hit hit man list, went check. You know, it’s another reason why Dr. Wan is fitting into this profile.
00:19:52:36 – 00:20:17:58
Keith
And then she said, you know what, While we’re on the subject, doctor Wan has previously threatened to shoot me during an argument. At that moment, I’m actually the investigator stopped the interview and went, okay, you’re coming with us to a safe location and we’re going to wrap up this investigation now, because this is when shit got really, really serious.
00:20:18:02 – 00:20:42:40
Keith
This is when they start to interview Dr. Wan who broke his ankles in some mysterious reason that I couldn’t figure out in the court documents. So he confirmed he and the baby mama, they’ve been arguing for the past 6 to 8 months. And that made him very angry when the victim reported him to his work for drinking in his office because it threaten his career and his livelihood.
00:20:42:45 – 00:20:59:23
Keith
You can imagine a doctor, I imagine they make a lot of money and he just looked at either being disciplined or fired or something. He’s probably stood to lose a lot of money if this turns sideways on him. And he was probably pissed. Does not excuse any of this.
00:20:59:23 – 00:21:09:41
Keith
Then the agents were like, I heard you posted something that you want to hurt your baby mama.
00:21:09:46 – 00:21:34:52
Keith
Did you happen to go on the dark web and post anything that says that you might want to hurt her? Do you? Might you even have a Coinbase account, say, And I imagine Doctor Wan sat there for a second, you know, trying to think about it real deep, like, you know, I’m really giving this an effort. And he goes, Nope, nope, nope.
00:21:34:54 – 00:22:02:40
Keith
Never been on the dark web. No, never been on the dark web. Do have a Coinbase account though. And the agents were like, okay, well, that’s interesting. Okay, Let me ask you another question. What are the transactions from the dark web traced back to your Coinbase account? How do you say that happened? And Wan, I think used the he used like the Shaggy
00:22:02:40 – 00:22:30:28
Keith
It wasn’t me of digital crime when he was like, maybe I’ve been hacked. Yes. Somebody hacked your Coinbase account and then went and went into the dark web, posted a forum post and, and like paid through your account for that post to kill your baby mama. That was all a hacker. It was just a hacker just like that.
00:22:30:28 – 00:22:57:26
Keith
That excuse if you’re not in computer crime and that if that doesn’t sound absurd, I that that’s why I try to explain it that way. It is absolutely absolutely an absurd, absurd type of an excuse to say a hacker broke in there and then use your money to put this whole thing together against you. So I, I imagine the agents at this point were probably like, Yeah, we got everything we need.
00:22:57:26 – 00:23:29:20
Keith
Not only this fucker uses his name on his dark web username, which they haven’t even told him yet, but they said, Yeah, doctor we’re we’re going to go back and look at the marketplace site and see, see what it says. But before we do that, we really, really would like you to tell the truth. Listen, if you did post this and let’s let’s just let’s just say for a moment, just for a moment that it was a mistake, right?
00:23:29:31 – 00:23:49:59
Keith
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s just say it was a mistake, right? And then Wan kind of sat there for a second. He was like, Yeah, okay. Yeah, Yeah, it was. It was kind of a mistake. It was kind of a mistake. And I imagine the agents were like, Holy shit. Okay, So basically he just admitted that he did this, but he said it was a mistake.
00:23:50:04 – 00:24:12:35
Keith
So now Wan is like admitting that the account is his, that the payments were his, the Coinbase was his and everything. So the interview just takes off at this point. And Wan goes, Yeah, I made the four payments. There were one was about 7500, the other one was about 7500. Seem to think about a third one is about 7500.
00:24:12:35 – 00:24:34:25
Keith
And then I topped off my account with another 1500. The reason why you might wonder why I used four payments was because those fuckers, I think, stole my first payment of about $8,000. Really pissed me off, but I needed a hit man, so I continued on and still funded my escrow and I imagine the agents had to sit down at that point.
00:24:34:25 – 00:24:58:43
Keith
They just let them continue talking. And you know, Dr. Wan, he says, You know what? I only intended to spend $15,000 total to hire a hitman here. And that was the the reason that I had to top off that account with that 1500 at the end was to get $15,000. But I end up spending a lot more than $15,000.
00:24:58:43 – 00:25:03:19
Keith
I end up spending What did I say earlier? It was like $24,000.
00:25:03:19 – 00:25:38:05
Keith
Then Wan says, After I put the money into my hitman escrow, I sat back and I checked the Darkweb Marketplace daily. Daily. For nearly a month after placing that assassination order. And I thought, Holy shit, that was some dedication to do all of that. It just I don’t know what the dispute was and it doesn’t matter, but it just seems like it would have been easier to have a divorce at this point or whatever.
00:25:38:10 – 00:26:01:17
Keith
I don’t know if they were married or what the split. It would just be easier to do that than spend $24,000 to get rid of this person that you know, gosh. Okay. So he goes on. It’s like I imagine the agents are thinking in their mind, hey, we’ve got everything we need here. And they’re waiting for Dr. Wan to finish speaking so they can say, hey, thanks for all your cooperation.
00:26:01:17 – 00:26:22:05
Keith
We’re going to go back to the station now. And Dr. Wan goes, Hey, you know what? You can even search my phone, but I don’t have it on me at the hospital. But if you did bring it, if you brought my phone to me, I could cancel that assassination order, withdraw the funds from the escrow account, and I would no worry, nobody would.
00:26:22:09 – 00:26:45:49
Keith
Nobody would be coming after her because nobody would be funded. And I imagine the agents probably looked at each other at that point. We’re like, okay, okay, we’ll go get your phone. And then, you know, also the subtext here, this this, this moment is probably the moment that saved the victim’s life. Okay. But back to the story. So it’s May 17th of 2022.
00:26:45:49 – 00:27:05:34
Keith
Agents returned back with his iPhone and they hand it to Doctor Wan and they said, do what you need to do. Hold on a second. I’m going to video record you and I am an old guy. Okay. So I’m holding it like the old style video cameras, 2022. They probably just videotaped it. I said videotape. There you go.
00:27:05:38 – 00:27:39:53
Keith
They probably just video it with their phone so that they documented him getting in there, which is him opening up the Onion browser and his iPhone using facial recognition to access it. Logging into the Darkweb Market Forum under the username jwan, that giant number. And then he typed in his password. He logged in successfully and then, as I imagine, maybe he was even proud of it.
00:27:39:53 – 00:28:05:18
Keith
He showed the agents, This is my order, this is my assassination order. And it had the victim’s name first and last. It had a home address, which I think they might have been to gather at the same address. According to some of the court paperwork I read in there, he described her car, her license plate. Remember earlier, she said he was taking videos of her license plate, which was weird.
00:28:05:23 – 00:28:28:23
Keith
And he said he said on the forum like this is his quote on the form message. He says can take wallet, phone and car shoot and go or take car. So that’s his instructions. He’s basically saying, you know, I guess when you kill her, that’s what he means by shoot. You could take her wallet, phone and car or you can just take her car.
00:28:28:25 – 00:28:45:06
Keith
You can just take whatever the fuck you want after you kill her, which is horrible. And then he showed the agents the status of his assassination order and the status on it. And this is a, quote, payment submitted and secured in escrow, very formal sounding.
00:28:45:06 – 00:28:55:07
Keith
So then the doctor, the good doctor accessed his Coinbase account to obtain his Bitcoin wallet address.
00:28:55:12 – 00:29:26:38
Keith
He requested a refund of his funds in the escrow account back to that address, and then he cancels the assassination order. So sit here for a second about all that stuff I just told you the agents basically just recorded him accessing the Darkweb, accessing that market, accessing or knowing about the order of the assassination for that particular person, the payment.
00:29:26:43 – 00:29:47:57
Keith
He logged in to his Coinbase account. He requested the refunds. He tied that whole picture together for the agents on his phone while they were sitting there and recording him, doing that the whole time. I imagine if it were to come time to have a trial, they would just sit down with this video, put it on the screen for the jury, and just said, We’re not even
00:29:48:10 – 00:29:58:57
Keith
going to talk. Not even going to talk. Just just watch this video. It will explain everything. Because because it did it was the whole thing. And he explained it to the agents.
00:29:58:57 – 00:30:12:33
Keith
Okay. So a couple of days later, agents came back, probably maybe just hoping, Hey, hey, doctor, we just came back to see you. This is now May 19th of 2022 or just a couple of days later.
00:30:12:38 – 00:30:43:51
Keith
Got your phone again. Could you do us a favor and confirm that that whole cancellation happened? I know. I know this is not Amazon, but let’s just let’s just treat it like Amazon and make sure make sure that order has been canceled. So we don’t get charged for it. Right. And so, again, they gave him his iPhone. He went in there, did this whole process again, whole process, facial recognition, all of that, just to get in there and go, yeah, yeah.
00:30:43:56 – 00:31:15:50
Keith
It’s now showing as canceled on the status and and the bitcoin though is still in his escrow. So again he requested a refund. So a pause there for a second as a defense, if he were to say I accidentally screwed up on the first one and you should throw that evidence out or whatever, this is a whole separate incident of him logging into all these accounts with all that information that he needs for that.
00:31:15:51 – 00:31:40:29
Keith
It just easily, easily proves the case of Dr. Wan doing the dirty deeds here. Okay. So in this session, too, he showed them some more evidence. He showed it a posting on May 2nd of 2022. So this is a couple of weeks ago, but he’s showing them at a later date where he says, I’ve submitted an order and curious how quickly it should be carried out.
00:31:40:34 – 00:32:02:40
Keith
Is there a way I can find out any progress? Is there anyone in my location? So he’s basically asking for the Amazon button where you click on it that says, Where’s my driver? Except it’s like, Where’s my hit man on a dark web hit man forum. And then a couple of days later he pulls another one. He says, I contacted admin, I need this taken care of fast, who can help?
00:32:02:40 – 00:32:32:06
Keith
This is in Georgia, USA. Yeah. So the good doctor, he showed the agents both of those messages and then he showed them a couple of messages that he had with the site administrator directly, not even just on the forum, but directly with the administrator. On May 11th of 2022. This is around the time he made those payments to the the Bitcoin escrow where it went missing.
00:32:32:10 – 00:33:02:01
Keith
And there was a message that says, this is all I have. I only want to spend $15,000. So that correlates with what I said earlier where he kept saying, I didn’t want to spend any more of $15,000 total on this. This is where we get that information. So another message the next day, on May 12th of 2022, he said this victim and he identified her by name first and last in the subject line, he says, So imagine kind of like an email.
00:33:02:01 – 00:33:26:19
Keith
So it’s got her name and says thanks. How soon do you think it can be done? This weekend. We have a court date Tuesday 17th. It would be good if it could be done before the 17th. Holy crap. That’s a creepy email to think about. Okay. So a couple of days later now it’s May 20th of 2022.
00:33:26:24 – 00:33:50:32
Keith
I know you’re going to be shocked by this, but the good doctor Wan, he was arrested for using a facility of interstate commerce with the intent that the murder of victim be committed in consideration for payment a.k.a murder for hire. So he was arrested a few days later. That agent is probably like, stop, stop. We have enough evidence at this point.
00:33:50:32 – 00:34:11:04
Keith
Just stop just stop. We are I don’t want to write a report this long anymore. Okay. It’s already 50 pages. All right, Just stop. So they just arrested him, and then so the whole legal process happens at this point where you do the arraignment and the person’s like, Holy shit, I’m really being charged with this thing. And he gets a lawyer.
00:34:11:08 – 00:34:41:24
Keith
And so the process starts in court. And then Doctor Wan’s lawyer says, I’d like to do a competency hearing on my client, please. And I thought, Holy shit, Right off the bat, by the way, it was like right off the bat on the case. I went holy shit. That was fast. And then there were a lot of motions going back and forth and time where they were talking about psychiatric exams, and then finally they came back with the result and it said he is competent.
00:34:41:24 – 00:35:03:52
Keith
So there was like all the argument about is he competent or not is he competentand they came back and says he is competent. So I imagine the good doctor was like, shit, you know that defense that just got swept aside for me. He just went fuck. Okay, so what’s going to be my next. Okay, so his next defense, he goes, You know what?
00:35:03:57 – 00:35:29:03
Keith
We don’t know anything about this anonymous tip earlier that got me in trouble. Let’s throw that shit out. So he got a lawyer to draft up a motion to throw out the evidence about the whole anonymous tip, which, in legal terms, if you can get something like that thrown out, usually anything afterwards can also be thrown out. So his whole argument was throw out an anonymous tip which led to me which led to my confession and all this other shit.
00:35:29:03 – 00:35:51:54
Keith
All that evidence I gave you throw all that out because the anonymous tip should never have happened. The government goes well, anonymous tip. I mean, it was anonymous, but it kind of. It was anonymous. All right, here’s what it is. It’s a news organization. Okay? So it’s not really anonymous, but we don’t want to tell you what a news organization it is.
00:35:51:54 – 00:36:20:08
Keith
So that way they can continue to hunt people on the dark Web looking to kill people. Okay. It’s a news organization that just passively saw your messages saying you want to kill your baby mama. They said, hey, FBI, we saw this on the Internet and you should probably investigate it. So we did and we found you fucker. So you cannot throw all this evidence out because a news organization found this.
00:36:20:13 – 00:36:38:42
Keith
So their whole argument was, that’s why we said it was anonymous. It was a news organization. It wasn’t like a confidential informant or anything along those lines. They just wanted to protect the source. So that way when another person goes out there and hires a hitman, that news organization can do the same type of job to them, which I kind of agree with. Let let them do their job.
00:36:38:42 – 00:36:40:34
Keith
Let’s find these people hiring hitmen.
00:36:40:34 – 00:37:05:42
Keith
So the court goes back. They listen to the arguments and says, okay, strong argument, strong argument. Both sides. But fuck no, you’re going to keep this evidence in, which means his confession’s in and all that evidence that he gave the investigators. That’s all going to stay in. I imagine the good doctor Wan sat there for a moment, went fuck.
00:37:05:52 – 00:37:26:52
Keith
All right. Okay. All right. All right. What’s my next defense. He saysto his attorneys and his attorneys are like an audio listeners… If you now you can’t see me, I’m just giving you a big ol shrug here. It’s this, like, what the fuck do we do now? As of October 17th, 2023, Dr. Wan says, okay, okay, I plead guilty. I know it was me, it was me.
00:37:26:52 – 00:37:55:35
Keith
It was. How did you guys know it was me? I mean, it’s not like I used my name in my username on the hit man’s website or had a Coinbase account that traced back to me or gave you all the fucking details when you interviewed me. It’s not like I gave you all that right now. So he is now said I’m guilty of that one count, which is a very substantial count, because he’s now facing ten years maximum in prison and a quarter million dollar fine.
00:37:55:39 – 00:38:22:32
Keith
Okay. That’s both of those are very steep. Now, ten years, I kind of went back and forth that that’s a lot, right? I mean, if I was facing ten years, that feels like a lot. But then you think murder and you’re like, that doesn’t seem like a lot. So maybe it is at the right middle ground, but wow, yeah, the government went in there and they said, Hey, listen, now I’m paraphrasing here.
00:38:22:32 – 00:38:41:25
Keith
Now bear with me. I’m really paraphrasing. They said, we think doctor Wan’s kind of an idiot and gave us all the evidence and confessed to everything. So we’re going to want to go light on him and give him just 87 months, which I immediately went, How much is that? Ten years did the math. No, it’s 7.25 years.
00:38:41:25 – 00:39:11:18
Keith
So seven and a quarter years. And I thought, okay, so they shaved off maybe almost three years for confessing. I don’t know how that works out, but that’s a I don’t know how to comment on that one. They what they said in the court documentation is that’s the low end. So they said he confessed. We’re going to say we only want the low end, which is just over seven years, which is still pretty steep.
00:39:11:23 – 00:39:37:54
Keith
Still pretty steep. I mean, if you look at it from the aspect that he didn’t actually commit a, no one physically got hurt. Right? Thankfully. So there’s that aspect to it. But if they did if they would of that to me is the reason why you need the steep sentence in this one. So I didn’t see a whole lot of arguments from his side on why he needed a lighter sentence.
00:39:37:54 – 00:39:57:38
Keith
I don’t know if they argued it in hearings. I didn’t catch it, but there wasn’t a single document that I could pull it from the like I could usually with other cases. So we just get to the sentencing and the court goes back and does whatever the court does. And they sat down. They said, you know what, We didn’t hear much argument from the other side, so we’ll give you eighty seven months.
00:39:57:43 – 00:40:19:13
Keith
So we got 7.25 years for trying to hire a hitman to kill his baby mama. I kind of feel like it should have been ten, but maybe that’s just me trying to round up to ten in my mind, I don’t know. So. And the court, I think, maybe went light on him because they gave him a supervised release of only two years.
00:40:19:20 – 00:40:44:16
Keith
Usually in most cases I see three years. And just any case, any case fraud case, murder cases, anything is almost always three years. So when I saw two, I thought maybe they’re sending a sign that they’re going light on him for this. Now, they did say he had two specific conditions while he was being supervised. Okay. And they’re not going to be big shockers for you.
00:40:44:16 – 00:41:06:29
Keith
One is he has to participate in alcohol treatment program and he has to stay in it. And the other is he has to stay in a mental health treatment program. If he violates either one of those, he has to go back to jail, which is probably a good idea in his case. So final thought. That’s it. That’s the end of the case.
00:41:06:29 – 00:41:32:06
Keith
I have a nice short one here this week. Didn’t even have two acts. Just have one act for you. So my final thoughts. Doctor Wan thought his baby mama’s life was only worth $15,000. That seemed like a low number to me. I don’t know. That seemed like a really low number. Even if you said $24,000 because he lost that money at the beginning, that still seems like a low number to me.
00:41:32:11 – 00:42:00:51
Keith
It seems like assassinations would be starting at maybe $50,000. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t hire assassins very often. So I’m not up on the going prices. But $15,000 seems very low to get somebody killed because on the opposite end, you got to think about the assassin and they got to go… You want me to jeopardize life in prison for only $15,000?
00:42:00:53 – 00:42:02:22
Keith
That’s not much money.
00:42:02:22 – 00:42:21:41
Keith
Like I said, 87 months. Yeah, I know. It’s a low sentence. I would have liked to see maybe ten years on this one, but, yeah, it feels kind of right. I’m happy I didn’t see him walk away with three or four years. That would have felt like a slap in the face. In this case, the victim could have very, very easily been harmed or killed.
00:42:21:41 – 00:42:38:21
Keith
So 87 months, I think. I do think that’s on the low side. So the doctor who swears to do no harm trying to murder his child’s mother over some kind of unknown argument to me is insanity.
00:42:38:21 – 00:42:48:25
Keith
And he must have thought so, too, because that’s why he went and said, let’s do the whole competency thing. And I don’t know if that was his idea or his attorneys, but he did it.
00:42:48:30 – 00:43:14:48
Keith
He went and had the evaluation and they came back and they said, No, you’re competent, you’re competent. And so that didn’t work for him. So even though I think it’s insane, the court didn’t think it was insane, thankfully, and he was charged with this in the end. Now, this is the first time, but if you listen to a bunch of our episodes here, anytime you buy stuff on the dark web, there’s some risk.
00:43:14:53 – 00:43:32:20
Keith
It’s just it’s like it’s a dark alley. You don’t know what you’re buying and you don’t know who you’re buying it from. You don’t know where you’re buying it. It’s like the place you’re buying it from. The forum could be suspect. You could lose your money. And it sounds like in this case he lost some money, just like we’ve seen lost money in other cases.
00:43:32:20 – 00:43:59:56
Keith
Just a few episodes ago, we were talking about money laundering and somebody scammed them out of money. So this happens all the time. And I just got one last tip for you. If you have. Listen. If everything else flew over your head and you didn’t care about it, just know watch out for those news organizations the next time you go on the dark web and post under your username of yourself trying to kill somebody that you identified that you would know.
00:44:00:01 – 00:44:20:14
Keith
Just watch out for that, Right? Because it’ll come back to bite you just like they did for Doctor Wan here. Thankfully. So I hope you enjoyed that case. And before I take you out, let me just remind you, please like, thumbs up, follow, subscribe, whatever it is on your platform, that one little action that you don’t have to pay for,
00:44:20:18 – 00:44:43:15
Keith
just clicking something… that helps me a ton. It gets me more views and just in front other people that have never seen this podcast and I appreciate it just immensely. And I just want to say thank you. With that now, I’m going to preview next week. Now, next week. I thought this was a really, really interesting case. I these cyber stalking cases, they just interest me a lot.
00:44:43:20 – 00:45:04:01
Keith
And each cyberstalking case tends to have its own reason behind the scenes of why the cyber stalking happened. This next case had a very unique reason of cyber stalking. I’m going to pop it on the screen for you here. This is gentleman on the left. I’ll introduce him in the next episode, but I just want to tell you about the case
00:45:04:01 – 00:45:31:57
Keith
so you’ll come back. It’s cyber stalking for China. Okay. And just to give you a little bit of a flavor of this case, this is a case at a university where one university student posts something for pro-democracy for Chinese people. And the individual you see on your screen decides to cyber stalk him over it. And I say him, I it could be a him or her I’m forgetting or I’m going to try to anonymize the victim as much as possible.
00:45:31:59 – 00:46:00:49
Keith
Just say they. Okay. So this person cyber stalked the victim in this case over a pro-democracy bulletin, a physical like piece of paper stuck up on a university campus. And it was just that twist of the case that was just so interesting to me. So I do hope you come back next week. We’re going to walk through that case just like we walked through this case and hopefully have a little bit of fun with it while we learn something.
00:46:00:49 – 00:46:04:28
Keith
So I’ll see you then. Okay, Thanks. Bye.
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