People respond to a "Rent a Hitman" website, web guy turns them in

In My Humble Opinion
41

There’s a gray area. If the government is knowingly working with a private citizen, the private citizen may be legally considered as a state actor.

42

So doesn’t this guy’s site work like this:

  • Create site that a reasonable person might suspect is fake,
  • Wait for people to solicit illegal services, give them a day to think about it, then confirm they want to move forward,
  • Refer the client to an actual detective (who he’s advised ahead of time who this client is and what they want),
  • Then let the real police start from scratch and run their own investigation.

It seems to me that the police don’t (and can’t) just take the website owner’s info at face value and use that to prosecute someone; don’t they have to confirm the facts and all the essential elements on their own? Presumably that happens after the “client” contacts them and repeats all the bad intentions to a real detective. IOW, the info collected by the website guy wouldn’t be used in prosecution; he just uses his website like a big sign saying “hey wannabe criminals, let me tell you who to call”.

I think people would get in trouble not for BSing with this fake website owner, but for trying to hire the actual detective afterwards in a separate transaction. I mean if the client calls up the undercover cop and for some reason recognizes that they are talking to Inspector Clouseau, couldn’t the just say “oh yeah I was stringing along this fake website trying to convince me they were a rent-a-hitman service; it was all a joke. Goodbye”.

43

I don’t believe the police knew ahead of time for the first two. The first time, he called a policeman he knew and explained the situation.

44

So, and IANAL, but in a case like this, what would be entrapment is someone offering to make a hit unsolicited, For example, you post a nasty review on FB and say you wish that business owner was dead. So, someone contacts you and offers do do it. That is entrapment.

Oddly, other than a couple politicians, etc there is no one I wish dead. Now hiring Vito to put the fear of Og into someone- that I might do, if the rates were decent. A good scare sometimes works.

45

What does Og charge for Mods?