Chilling audio displayed at a TEDTalk has revealed the moment a dark web researcher broke the news to a woman that she was about to be killed by a hitman.
Carl Miller took the stage at TEDxManchester in March 2025, where he shared his experience of uncovering a sinister website lurking on the dark web where people could order a hitman to kill someone they wanted dead.
Posted on YouTube, the video description detailed: “Who pays for an assassin on the internet? Dark web researcher Carl Miller spent years tracking down the answer to this question. In this chilling talk, he shares how he uncovered real kill orders placed online by seemingly ordinary individuals - and gives an unsettling look at what drives people to the brink.”
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Investigating the site, Miller recalled how he initially involved the police but after finding out that they weren’t going to carry out an investigation, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
The researcher set about locating the people who had been placed on the hit list and found a way to contact them in order to warn them that they could be in grave danger.
However, Miller shared how he was shocked to discover that most people weren’t worried about this - in fact, many didn’t even believe him.
Sharing the chilling audio from one call with a woman he found on the list, the woman said to Miller: “I’m actually not really surprised. I’m having an ugly divorce, it’s going on for about three years now and, you know, there’s money involved, quite a lot of money and my husband actually doesn’t want to pay it so I’m not really surprised.”
Miller said: “So there’s a whole other investigation that we did into the people running the site. It turns out very likely that they were a group of Romanian cyber criminals. And some years ago, they were then arrested in a rush of raids across Romania. We were then locked out the site. And yet convictions have continued that we had nothing to do with and that is the only reason I can stand on this stage today and tell you about any of this.”
People were left shocked by the video, with many taking to the YouTube comment section to share their own reactions to it.
One user wrote: “I got his main point - ordinary people are reaching out to get people killed. Any endeavour to save lives is to be respected. Really good job.”
Another said: “Weird feeling to be relieved that the site was seemingly just run by scammers.”
And a third person added: “This is going to be a great Netflix true crime series.”