A woman has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison for hiring an online hitman to kill the wife of a man she met on a dating site.
Court documents state Melody Sasser paid close to $10,000 in Bitcoin for the services of a hitman available on the site 'Online Killers Market' in 2023.
The 48-year-old met David Wallace on Match.com in 2020, with the pair becoming 'hiking friends', according to the complaint.
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10 News reports they would often take to the hills together, though it remains unclear if they ever had a romantic relationship.
Remaining friends for a while, trouble well and truly commenced in 2022 when Wallace moved to Alabama with his wife.
The couple were yet to tie the knot at this stage, with Wallace ultimately telling Sasser he had got engaged.
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The complaint states Sasser responded to the news in a remarkable way by saying: "I hope you both fall off a cliff and die."
This is when things got sinister as Sasser began stalking the couple through fitness app Strava, while the US Attorney said in a press release Sasser used the dark web in January 2023 to speak to a hitman who would kill Wallace's wife.
The release states: "According to filed court documents, Sasser admitted to using a dark web-hosted site known as the Online Killers Market for the purpose of hiring a hitman to murder an Alabama resident.
"In her communications with the site, Sasser provided photographs and location information of the victim."
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It adds: "In exchange for the anticipated murder of the victim, Sasser used the internet to transmit nearly $10,000 in cryptocurrency to the would-be assassins. Ultimately, the plan was unsuccessful."
Sasser was ultimately arrested, with a subsequent search of her house seeing law enforcement uncover 'a journal listing out several other hitman websites, a handwritten account of communications with the Online Killers Market, and a stack of U.S. currency underneath a sticky note listing a Bitcoin address,' according to the release.
On Wednesday (18 September), Sasser was sentenced to eight years and four months behind bars as part of a plea agreement.
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Sasser’s attorney has been speaking following the plea deal, with Jeff Whitt saying his client is remorseful about her actions.
According to 10 News, he said: "She wants [the victim] to be able to move on with her life. Her actions were the result of a breakdown of massive proportion."
Callum Jones