Florida woman used fake hitman site to try to kill 3-year-old son, police say

An 18-year-old Miami woman faces criminal charges for allegedly attempting to hire a hitman to kill her 3-year-old son.

Jazmin Paez is accused of contacting a fake hitman website asking that her child "be taken away far far far away and possibly be killed but ASAP," with a deadline date of July 20, according to the arrest affidavit.

She provided her phone number, address and photo of her son, but used a fake name for herself, the documents said.

The man who runs the website contacted the Miami-Dade Police Department immediately Tuesday. Officials said they used the IP address and phone number listed on the request to confirm the home address for Paez. Police arrived at that location Tuesday evening and spoke with the boy's grandmother who has been taking care of him. She told them Paez moved out to live with her father in May 2023.

After her arrest, Paez confessed to requesting the hit on her son, police said. In her interview, she said that her romantic partner of more than a year recently broke things off because she had a son. She said that he told her to "get rid of her son," according to the affidavit. Messages obtained by the police show that she told her partner, "it's being taken care of," in reference to her son.

Paez is being charged with solicitation of first-degree murder and unlawful use of a communications device, and she will need to stay away from her son upon release Local10.com reported. She posted bail Thursday, CBS reported.

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Fake hitman website stops killers, operator says

The arrest affidavit said the fake hitman website is a "parody site" that exists in order to notify the police when someone is looking to have another person killed. Miami-Dade Police Department spokesperson Luis Sierra said its operator does not officially work for the police.

The man behind the site is Bob Innes, who stumbled into this undercover work nearly 15 years ago, according to a December 2021 article from The Guardian.

He bought the domain, rentahitman.com, in 2005 while starting a website traffic consulting business to get his clients more "hits," the outlet reported. He abandoned that business but kept the domain. He was surprised to receive messages from a woman in 2010 asking him to find someone to kill three of her family members over an inheritance dispute.

Since then, he has been involved in hundreds of legal cases where he intervened on someone soliciting an assassin.

Still, he has sprinkled the site with jokes to let people know it isn't the real deal. It reads "your point & click solution," and touts being 100% HIPPA compliant under the "hitman information privacy & protection act of 1964."

After someone contacts the site, Innes said he gives solicitors a 24-hour period to change their mind. If they still want to move forward with an "operative consultation" after that, he contacts the authorities.

“As long as these emails keep coming in, I will continue to act,” he told The Guardian. “So far, nearly 150 lives have been saved as a direct result of the site and my actions.”

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