TN Man Gets 87 Months in Murder-for-Hire Case
A Tennessee man was sentenced to 87 months in prison for trying to hire a hitman on the darkweb.
According to court documents, Nelson Paul Replogle, 60, of Knoxville, Tennessee, admitted using the darkweb to hire a hitman. Replogle paid a purported hitman 0.2924549 Bitcoin to kill his wife on a fraudulent murder-for-hire site.
Replogle’s murder-for-hire plot came to light after someone (@deku_shrub no doubt) anonymously contacted the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and told them that someone had hired a hitman on the darkweb to kill Replogle’s wife, Ann Replogle.
BBC journalists contacted the FBI and informed them of the murder-for-hire plot on April 20, 2021. The FBI immediately contacted the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and sent a protective detail to Replogle’s home.
Replogle told investigators that he knew nobody who wanted his wife dead.
BBC reporters contacted the FBI with more information on the murder-for-hire plot. They told the FBI that Replogle had first accessed the fake murder-for-hire site on April 15, 2021. The reporters also provided the FBI information about Replogle’s messages to the purported hitman. Replogle told the hitman that he wanted the hit to look like a carjacking gone wrong. He then gave the hitman his wife’s name and address, a description of her vehicle, and a specific date and time for taking her pet to a veterinarian’s appointment. Replogle and the hitman agreed on a price, and he sent 0.2924549 Bitcoin. The BBC reporters sent the FBI the Bitcoin transaction details, including the transaction hash and addresses involved.
Feds linked the transaction to a Coinbase account controlled by Replogle. Records from Coinbase revealed that Replogle had accessed the Coinbase account from an I.P. address associated with an AT&T account under his name. Replogle had funded the transaction using his account at Horizon Bank.
As Darknetlive reported last year, Replogle pleaded guilty to one count of murder for hire on October 25, 2021.
On February 24, 2022, Senior United States District Judge Leon Jordan sentenced Replogle to 7 years and three months in federal prison. Three years of supervised release will follow the prison sentence.
Also, I should point out that the administrator of this and many other fake murder-for-hire sites is not just a fraudster who does not care that the people he steals from get caught, he has openly admitted that he sends their information to law enforcement. He has also directly threatened customers to send their information to law enforcement if they do not comply with his demands.