Image Credit: Salem County Jail
In an effort to keep the 14-year-old boy from testifying in his child sex abuse case, a New Jersey man has claimed that he hired a hitman $20,000 in bitcoin to kill the boy.
John Michael Musbach, 31, entered a guilty plea last week in Camden federal court to charges that he had hired a murderer online. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, he entered a plea of guilty to “one count of knowingly and intentionally using and causing another to use a facility of interstate and foreign commerce, that is the internet, with the intent that a murder be committed.”
In the summer of 2015, Musbach was first charged with exchanging pornographic images with a victim who was 13 years old. Prosecutors claim that the victim’s parents informed the authorities after hearing about the exchange. Police recognized Musbach in March 2016, and he was detained on suspicion of publishing child pornography after a search warrant was executed at his Galloway, New Jersey residence.
Musbach tried to hire the killer using cryptocurrencies while the legal case was ongoing. He “repeatedly communicated with the administrator of a murder-for-hire website” on the dark web between May 7 and May 20, 2016. According to the press statement, Musbach inquired as to whether a 14-year-old was too young to be the target and, after learning that this was not a concern, paid about 40 bitcoin (about $20,000 at the time) for the hit.
Musbach could spend up to ten years in prison and pay a $250,000 fine. On June 13, he will receive his punishment.