In 2005, Bob Innes paid $9.20 for
RentAHitman.com.
He had a totally legit IT-security business in mind, where "hit" meant website traffic, and the plan was to offer network penetration testing and cybersecurity.
The business never launched, but the domain did its own thing anyway.
A few years later, Bob checked the inbox tied to the site and found hundreds of messages.
Some people wanted to FIND WORK AS HITMEN.
Others were asking, in all seriousness, to have someone killed.
The site was an obvious parody with fake testimonials, a fictional operator named Guido Fanelli, and nearly 18,000 "field operatives."
And, somehow, people still filled out the request form with their own information, details about their targets, and what they wanted done.
The first request Bob treated as a real threat came from a woman who wanted three relatives killed.
He asked if she wanted to be connected with a local field operative, and she said yes. The field operatives were law enforcement, and she was arrested.
Since then, Bob has kept forwarding credible requests to the authorities, and the site has contributed to arrests, prosecutions, and convictions.
He describes himself as accidentally becoming customer service for criminals, which might be the best job description on the internet.
It's also a wild example of how much a domain can say before anyone sees the website. In this case, people read three words, decided exactly what the business was, and acted on it.
Most companies spend years earning that kind of clarity.
RentAHitman.com got it for $9.20… it just attracted the worst possible customers.
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