A Georgia doctor who attempted to pay for murder using Bitcoin has been sentenced to over 7 years in federal prison.
According to Dailymail, 54-year-old Dr. James Wan pleaded guilty to using the internet to facilitate murder-for-hire after transferring over $16,000 worth of bitcoin to a dark web marketplace in 2022 while he was trying to hire a hitman to kill his long-term girlfriend.
Wan, an internal medicine specialist from Duluth, made multiple Bitcoin payments totaling over $25,000 to the dark web forum. He accidentally sent an initial $8,000 payment to the wrong wallet before correcting the transaction. Wan also asked the marketplace administrator if the murder could appear as an “accident” rather than a normal shooting.
However, the FBI received a tipoff from a news organization monitoring the dark web and placed Wan’s girlfriend under protective custody. When confronted, Wan confessed to the plot and checked for status updates daily. The Bitcoin transactions from the doctor’s wallet corroborated his confession.
Following his arrest, Wan was fired from his job at a vein clinic in Lawrenceville and his medical license expired. At his sentencing Thursday in Atlanta federal court, Wan received over 7 years in prison for his crime.
Prosecutors called the plot cold-hearted but said it was averted thanks to quick work by the FBI to expose Wan’s concealment attempts on the dark web.
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