Spurned lover jailed 5 years for hiring hitman on Dark Web

The married man who hired a hitman on the Dark Web to kill his former lover's new boyfriend was jailed for five years yesterday.

During sentencing, District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan said the crime was committed in cold blood, with a high degree of premeditation.

Allen Vincent Hui Kim Seng, 47, a risk management executive, began an extramarital affair with his colleague, Ms Ng Woan Man, 30, in 2016.

After they broke up last year, Hui got jealous that she was seeing Mr Tan Han Shen, 30, and ordered a hit on him from a website called Camorra Hitmen that he had found on the Dark Web.

Deputy Public Prosecutors Kumaresan Gohulabalan and Grace Chua had asked for Hui to be jailed for at least five years. They called the crime a highly sophisticated act which leveraged on the convenience and anonymity of the Dark Web.

Asking for 2-1/2 years' jail instead, Hui's lawyer, Mr Lee Teck Leng, said in his mitigation plea that the murder would not have happened, citing several articles that reported the website as a scam.

He also said that Hui went into depression after Ms Ng ended their relationship and he had suicidal thoughts when she told him she was considering seeing someone else.

Hui's thinking and judgment were likely to have been affected by his depression, Mr Lee added.

But Judge Shaiffudin said: "It being a scam is not a mitigating factor as Hui had truly believed that he had engaged a hitman."

And when the hitman suggested the plan, Hui did not baulk at the idea of murder.

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The judge also said there was no evidence to suggest Hui was suffering from depression at the time of the offence. And even if he was, there was "no causal link" to the offence.

Hui pleaded guilty in July to one count of intentionally abetting a hitman to kill Mr Tan.

He first stalked Ms Ng's social media accounts incessantly to monitor all the posts she was "liking".

When he found out they were by Mr Tan, he saved Mr Tan's profile picture and searched for hitmen to hire.

He also waited for 4-1/2 hours near Ms Ng's flat to spot Mr Tan but failed.

He later sent her photograph to the website, telling them to identify her boyfriend and cripple his right hand.

He later waited for more than two hours at a block of flats to spot Mr Tan and trailed him to find his address, before forwarding the particulars to Camorra Hitmen.

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He then wanted more than just to incapacitate Mr Tan's hand, and directed the hitman to pour acid on his face instead.

When the hitman suggested murdering Mr Tan, Hui agreed.

He paid more than $8,000 in bitcoin to Camorra Hitmen.

On May 12 last year, he ordered that Mr Tan be killed in a staged car accident on May 22.

Hui was arrested on May 17, after a journalist from US-based media company CBS tipped off the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which in turn alerted the police.

The hit was then called off.

For abetting murder, Hui could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined.

This article was first published in The New Paper. Permission required for reproduction.