Inside a dark web kill list | Carl Miller

Summary

Podcast Summary: Inside a Dark Web Kill List | Carl Miller

Podcast Information:

• Title: TED Talks Daily
• Host/Author: TED
• Episode: Inside a Dark Web Kill List | Carl Miller
• Release Date: June 10, 2025

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Introduction

In the gripping TED Talk titled "Inside a Dark Web Kill List," digital researcher Carl Miller delves into the sinister realities lurking within the dark web. Miller exposes the truth behind online assassination services, unraveling how what seems like a fictional trope is, in fact, a horrifying reality.

The Dark Web Assassination Service

Miller begins by challenging the common perception of assassins and hit lists as mere movie fantasy. He explains his deep dive into the dark web during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when online activities surged globally.

"This isn't the stuff of movies, but rather of real life."
— Carl Miller [03:24]

He describes encountering a deceptively simple website that offered direct access to mafia-like services for ordering murders. The site promised anonymity through advanced encryption, making illicit transactions seemingly safe and confidential.

Discovery of the Kill List

In 2020, Miller collaborated with a hacker named Chris Monteiro, who identified a vulnerability in the assassination website. This flaw allowed them to access the backend, revealing numerous kill orders with detailed personal information about the intended victims, including names, addresses, and Bitcoin payments.

"It was the single most grotesque, disgusting, horrible, fragile, frightening thing I've ever had to read in my entire life."
— Carl Miller [07:00]

The kill orders varied in nature—from short, terse requests for murder to lengthy justifications for the intended killings. Some orders included real-time updates tracking the victim's movements.

Attempts to Alert the Targets

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Miller reached out to local authorities. However, the Metropolitan Police were skeptical and opted not to launch an active investigation. Faced with inaction from law enforcement, Miller took the monumental decision to inform the potential victims directly.

Miller recounts his agonizing attempts to contact the individuals on the kill list. Initial calls were met with disbelief and rejection, as victims found the allegations too fantastical to accept.

"I was awful. I mean, no one believed me."
— Carl Miller [08:20]

To overcome this barrier, Miller enlisted the help of local journalists, who facilitated face-to-face meetings with the targets. One poignant moment was his encounter with Elena from Zurich, who surprisingly remained unfazed by the revelation.

Unmasking the Perpetrators

Through meticulous investigation, Miller and his team uncovered that the supposed hitmen were not skilled assassins but rather inept criminals prone to making mistakes. This incompetence indicated that the primary intent behind the website was extortion rather than actual killings. The perpetrators exploited the fear and desperation of individuals, capitalizing on their willingness to pay hefty sums for perceived justice or retribution.

Collaboration with Law Enforcement and Legal Outcomes

Miller's revelations led to a significant collaboration with the FBI. Over several years, they exposed 175 paid kill orders worldwide, resulting in 32 arrests and 28 convictions, amassing approximately 180 years of prison time for the culprits involved.

"We're not still doing this."
— Carl Miller [16:40]

The investigation revealed that the dark web site was likely operated by a group of Romanian cybercriminals. Their arrest marked a crucial victory against online extortion and dark web crimes.

Insights and Conclusions

Miller concludes by reflecting on the unsettling implications of his findings. He emphasizes that the individuals behind these kill lists were ordinary people—employed, socially engaged, and leading seemingly normal lives—driven by a profound need for control, often stemming from intimate partner violence.

"The perpetrators are basically normal people. They have jobs, they have friends, they go about living their lives just like you and I."
— Carl Miller [16:40]

He highlights the disturbing reality that modern technology has lowered the barriers to committing violent crimes, making it easier for regular individuals to engage in extreme actions like ordering assassinations.

Miller’s account serves as a stark reminder of the dark potentials within the digital age, urging society to be vigilant about the hidden dangers that technology can facilitate.

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Key Takeaways

• The dark web hosts real, functioning assassination services masquerading under the guise of dark secrecy and anonymity.
• Initial attempts to alert victims were met with disbelief, necessitating innovative approaches to ensure their safety.
• The perpetrators behind these dark web services are often ordinary individuals driven by a desire for control and retribution.
• Collaborative efforts between digital researchers and law enforcement can effectively combat and dismantle such illicit operations.
• The accessibility of violent tools and services online poses a significant threat, emphasizing the need for robust cybersecurity and legal frameworks.

Notable Quotes

• "This isn't the stuff of movies, but rather of real life." — Carl Miller [03:24]
• "It was the single most grotesque, disgusting, horrible, fragile, frightening thing I've ever had to read in my entire life." — Carl Miller [07:00]
• "The perpetrators are basically normal people. They have jobs, they have friends, they go about living their lives just like you and I." — Carl Miller [16:40]

Conclusion

Carl Miller's eye-opening exploration into the dark web's kill lists not only sheds light on the disturbing ease with which violent criminal activities can be orchestrated online but also underscores the imperative for continued vigilance and collaboration in combating such threats. This TED Talk serves as a crucial wake-up call to the latent dangers that technology can unleash when misused, advocating for proactive measures to safeguard against these evolving digital menaces.

Transcript

[Elise Hu]

Hey, TED Talks Daily listeners, it's Elise. Thank you for making this show part of your daily routine. We really appreciate it and we want to make it even better for you. So we put together a quick survey and we'd love to hear your thoughts. It's listener survey time. It only takes a few minutes, but it really helps us shape the show and get to know you, our listeners, so much better. Head to the episode description to find the link to the listener survey with we would really appreciate you doing it. Thank you so much for taking the time to help the show. You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We see it in the movies. Assassins, hit lists, dramatic races to save people's lives. How real can all this stuff be? Well, in this wild talk, digital researcher Carl Miller makes it clear this isn't the stuff of movies, but rather of real life. He takes us inside the mysterious workings of the dark web where people are engaging in immoral acts that belong in the halls of true crime. Hold on to your seats for this talk.

[Carl Miller]

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[Elise Hu]

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[Nikayla]

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[Carl Miller]

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[Nikayla]

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[Carl Miller]

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[Nikayla]

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[Elise Hu]

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[Carl Miller]

All right, well, everyone, good morning. So I'm Carl Miller, and I spent years watching people trying to have someone murdered. They thought they were doing it in secret, but they weren't. So the year was 2020. Covid had descended, and just like everyone else, I was spending a lot of time online. But I was going on a bit of the Internet that I think probably fewer people here have actually been on the darknet. A bit of the Internet that, thanks to clever technology, encryption, basically ensures your anonymity. And rumors had swirled around the darknet for years that you could buy anything on the darknet, that you could buy drugs, you could buy guns, that you could buy uranium, and also that you can buy murder. I mean, it looks like a website from the 1990s. It looks like someone trying to make clip arts as scary as possible. But the offer that the website makes is a serious one. This website is saying, hey, we're the mafia, and now you can deal directly with us thanks to the darknet. So you put on, you load in your alias, you type in the message, and then it says, you can directly transact to have someone killed. And so it was that in 2020, a hacker that I was working with, a man called Chris Monteiro, he was looking at this website. He was probing it, he was scanning it, he was seeing what he could learn. And then in discovery, which changed, I think, both Chris and my life forever, Momentously, Chris found a little vulnerability with the way in which this website worked. A kind of little technical gap, if you will, that he could kind of in a weird way, wiggle through, through and get into the back end of the website. And there, Chris could see all the kill orders being placed. He could see names, addresses, pattern of life information, bitcoin payments, and all the messages trying to have someone killed. So he phoned me. So suddenly we were seeing that there was a hit to kill someone in Amsterdam. A simple, easy person, but high risk of putting me in jail. They paid almost $2,000. There was a hit to Kill someone in Paris for $1,000. A person that needs to go away, her apartment needs to be set on fire. A large order to kill someone in Slovakia. I need you to take down one guy, they say $14,000. There was an order in Hyderabad, in India, there was an order in Berlin to kill someone probably working from home. $21,000 for that one. Now, some of these kill orders were short and curt and clipped. Others were long, offering lurid justifications as to why it was the right thing that this person had to die. And others still, they would log in almost every day, almost providing, like, real time updates. Oh, the target's just left the house. This is the car they're driving. This is how they're going to get to work. But put together, we called all of these orders the kill list. It was the single. Is the single most grotesque, disgusting, horrible, fragile, frightening thing I've ever had to read in my entire life. And it was getting longer all the time. So I did what any sane person would do. I phoned the police. And so it was in the middle of COVID The first two strangers that I'd seen for months were two somewhat nervous uniformed police officers from the Metropolitan Police stood in my kitchen and I laid it all out for them. I took them through the website, I took them through the hacks, I showed them the orders. We'd drawn this diagram of how the website worked, and they looked at it and they looked at me and they looked at each other, and they were unfortunately, genuinely quite concerned. I was insane. And it's a bit of a longer story, but ultimately the Metropolitan Police decided not to take up an active investigation in the sites. But we knew we couldn't step away. Like these people, these people whose images we could see, who knew where we lived, these people being targeted, they might be in terrible danger. You know, they might not know that someone out there on the darknet was trying to have them killed. So we took a decision, maybe the most difficult decision I've ever had to make, certainly professionally. And the decision was that I would go and reach the people on the kill list myself directly, that I would tell them that someone was trying to kill them. And so we sculpted a script. We worked with a psychologist. We worked out how we would try and soften the blow of being told that someone was trying to kill you. And I had to also emotionally embrace myself for this. I dreaded it. The idea that I was about to throw this emotional hand grenade in someone's life, it was absolutely awful. Anyway, this is the call No, I don't want any information. I'm trying to give you information. I don't care.

[Elise Hu]

I'm sorry.

[Carl Miller]

Okay, well, thanks for your time anyway. Do give me a phone back if you'd like more information. Would we be able to arrange a time to be able to talk to you at greater length about that? Okay, so you don't. You hung up on me. I mean, I wasn't an emotional hand grenade going off in these people's lives. I was awful. I mean, no one believed me. You know, I spent a week. But the story was so unbelievably fantastical. Darknet assassins, you know, kill orders that I just kept getting hung up on for a week. So we knew we needed to evolve our strategy in quickly. So we got local journalists on the scene. They believed us to go and directly meet the people on the kill list face to face. And the first place we tried to do this was to reach a woman called Elena from the outskirts of Zurich. I spoke to the local journalists. She drove up to where Elena was living. She took a deep breath, she got out of her car and knocked on Elena's front door. In five minutes turned into 10, 10 into 15. And then at last, after an agonizing wait, there was Elena on a zoom call. A woman whose face I'd only seen on a kill order was there speaking to me. And this was the warning I delivered her. Sorry, there's no easy way of really saying this. We've come across some information which might mean that someone had put some information regarding you on the site.

[Nikayla]

I'm actually not really surprised.

[Carl Miller]

Really? In what way?

[Nikayla]

I'm having an ugly divorce. It's going on for about. For about three years now, so. And you know, there's money involved, quite a lot of money, and my husband actually doesn't want to pay it. So, you know, I'm not really surprised.

[Carl Miller]

She took it unbelievably well. Now, an important thing to know is that it wasn't just messages going into the site. The shadowy people running the site were also replying. Some of these conversations would go back and forth for weeks or months, and we could read all of those as well. And what we realized when we were reading all of those was that if there were hitmen out there, these were the most incompetent hitmen on the face of the planet. They kept losing their weapons or they kept getting lost. It build up to the hit and suddenly the target would be too well protected. They'd have to pull out, new teams have to come in and every single time, the price would go up. It became really obvious that there were no shadowy hitmen out there. The site had no interest in killing any of these people. They were just trying to extort as much money as they could from the people placing the orders. But the people placing the orders, they of course did not know that they were deadly serious when they were trying to have these people killed. And nowhere was that lesson starker than actually with Elena herself. So after we spoke to the police, so after we spoke to Elena, we spoke to the police. And sometime after that, the Swiss police did arrest her husband. And only then did we realize that he'd been renting a secret room next to her flat. And in this room there was a flip knife, a telescopic baton, a submachine gun, a Glock 9 millimeter pistol, an AK47, zip ties, a black bin bag, black rubber gloves, GPS trackers, lock picks. That was a lesson to us if we needed it, the people writing these orders could be just as dangerous as any Darknet hitman. So who are these people? Who are the people writing these orders? Who is paying $2.2K for a 5 foot 5 male with blue eyes to be killed? Who? She's Kelly Harper. Kelly Harper is a go getter. Hospital administrator, one time college sweetheart of the target of the order who'd been locked with him in a bitter years long custody battle that raged across the courts and the schools and the hospitals of Somme Perry, W.I. who's paying $16,000 to have a couple removed. Someone that they quite, quote, quite see eye to eye on something weird. Which sounds like the understatement of the absolute century. This is a man that's done that. Christopher Pence, 40 year old Microsoft IT security technician. The biological father of 11 children. The adoptive father of five more children. A deeply religious man actually, who from a large solitary house in a valley in Utah, secretly plotted to have the biological parents of his five adoptive children killed. The order went by the Darknet moniker scar215 and they actually laid out a bonus structure. So an additional 10,000 to permanently withdrawal court motions. An additional 10,000 to keep her mouth shut and tell no one. The husband does not know this is happening, writes the order. Any guesses? The husband definitely did know this was happening. This is a husband, Dr. Ronald Ilke, a neonatologist. A doctor. A man who ran a clinic for vulnerable women with addiction issues. A man who went from a poor rural upbringing in Oregon to a senior city clinician. And a man obsessed with controlling all the people in his life, especially the women. A man so devoid of contrition that after his conviction he's been trying to sell the book rights to his life by describing it as 50 shades of gray on steroids. And it wasn't just here. We saw orders in Nevada, we saw orders in Tampa, we saw orders in Spain, we saw orders in Italy. We saw orders almost everywhere. Now we started working in secret with the FBI and we were passing all of our orders to the FBI. To give you a sense of the scale, over the years that we were doing this, we disclosed 175 paid for kill orders around the world. 32 arrests so far, 28 convictions so far. Around 180 years of prison time has been sentenced as a result of the investigation so far. There's probably more to come. Thanks. And in case anyone's wondering, no, we're not still doing this. So there's a whole other investigation that we did into people running the site. It turns out very likely that they were a group of Romanian cyber criminals. And some years ago they were then arrested in a rash of raids across Romania. We were then locked out the site, and yet convictions have continued that we have had nothing to do with. And that is the only reason I can stand on this stage today and tell you about any of this. This is, by the way, not a story I really thought I would ever be on a stage and able to tell anyone about. So it's a spectacular moment for me to be able to finally kind of talk to the world about what we were doing all those long years ago. But where are we left with? That's, I think, the final idea I want to leave us with. Like, what does all of this actually really mean? When I first started doing this, I thought the kinds of cases that we were going to be dealing with were going to be to do with maybe organized crime, big drug deals gone awry. And I think the reality is somewhat more unsettling than all of that. What this website seems to do, in the eyes of the orders at least, is to make taking out a hit on someone convenient and clean and safe and easy, whereas it was once difficult and dangerous and scary, is essentially lowered the barriers to entry to ordering an assassination. And I think that that brings us face to face with something that is quite disconcerting. The people on this list, the kill list and the people that put them there are normal people. The perpetrators are basically normal people. They have jobs, they have friends, they go about living their lives just like you and I, you know, and they were going about holding all of that down basically at the same time that they were plotting in secret, constantly, coldly, often to have someone killed. I think that they if there's one thing that unites them all, it was often intimate partner violence, by the way, spiraling out of control. And I think the one thing that unites them all is a desire for control, a need to have it, an inability to lose it, control of a thing, control of a relationship, of a family, and a willingness ultimately, of course, to kill to get it back. But I think that's where we are. And if there's one thing that I've come away from this whole looter rid's crazy journey, really thinking we might all be just a little bit closer to being on a kill list, we might like to think. Thanks very much, everyone.

[Elise Hu]

That was Carl Miller at TedX Manchester in 2025. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at Ted.comCurationGuidelines and that's it for today's show. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar and Tonsika Sarmarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balaurazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. If you love to travel, Capital One has a rewards credit card that's perfect for you. With the Capital One Venture X card, you earn unlimited double miles on everything you buy. Plus you get premium benefits at a collection of luxury hotels when you book on Capital One Travel. And with Venture X, you get access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. Open up a world of travel possibilities with a Capital One Venture X card. What's in your wallet?

[Nikayla]

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[Nikayla]

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