A Queens woman went shopping online for a paid killer to whack her lover’s wife — only to find out that the dark web “hitman-for-hire” site she used was a scam, the feds say.
Yue Zhou, 42, didn’t just lose $5,000 in Bitcoin to the scammer she thought was setting up the hit — she also lost her freedom after the feds indicted her on a murder-for-hire charge.
Zhou, who’s been locked up since her arrest in Virginia last month, was slated to appear in Brooklyn Federal Court Monday afternoon.
She traveled across the country to work at spas, the feds allege, including establishments in Maryland and Wyoming with ties to illicit sex work.
About five years ago, she became “emotionally invested” in her married lover, and she wanted to wed him and have his children, the feds allege.
That’s when she began plotting to eliminate the competition, the feds say.
Sometime between March 25 and April 4, 2019 she signed onto a purported “hitman-for-hire” website under the name “BIGTREE,” the feds allege.
From there, she took several steps — placed the order for the hit, contracted with a Bitcoin exchange service in Ukraine to make a $5,000 Bitcoin payment to the site, shelled out that $5,000 to a middleman in Brooklyn, confirmed receipt of the payment, and provided detailed descriptions of the target, her home and her work schedule, the feds said.
She took care to provide the best times to kill her love rival, so that the object of her desire would have an alibi, the feds allege.
She also tried to add a second target — her lover’s adult daughter, the feds allege.
There was just one problem.
“Unknown to the defendant at the time was that the hitman-for-hire website was a scam run by a third party; there were no actual hitmen for hire,” prosecutors wrote in a Monday letter to a judge.
When Zhou realized she’d been had, she sent messages to the scam site administrator threatening him and his family with physical and sexual violence, the feds allege.
She also sent her paramour’s daughter a threatening message in December 2019 that read, “warning: I will cut your body into a hundred pieces if you guys still don’t take responsibilities. [sic] I know where you live. I watch you all time,” the feds allege.
In February 2021, Zhou offered the daughter’s neighbor $10,000 and sex to kill her, according to the feds. “Throw her body into the lake,” she’s accused of texting the neighbor. “I really don’t want to see her again.”
Zhou pleaded not guilty at an arraignment before Brooklyn Federal Court Magistrate Judge Robert Levy Monday afternoon and was ordered held without bail.
Prosecutors called her a clear danger to the community and a flight risk, noting that a phone connected to her showed she made threats to a police captain in Maryland.
Her lawyer, Kannan Sundaram of the Federal Defendants, reserved the right to apply for bail at a later date.
“Her depraved plan was only thwarted because the website she used to set up the murder-for-hire was a scam,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said Monday. “Although the scheme involved newer technologies like the Internet and Bitcoin, the end result would have been age-old cold-blooded murder.”
