A Beverly Hills man was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for soliciting the murder of a woman who didn’t want to date him.
Scott Quinn Berkett, a 25-year-old IT engineer, had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years after pleading guilty to use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire.
He was arrested in May 2021 after the purported hired killers he contacted on the “dark web” accepted $13,000 in Bitcoin from him and then turned him over to law enforcement.
The arrest affidavit included an exchange in which a user believed to be Berkett told the dark web group: “I’d like it to look like an accident, but robbery gone wrong may work better. So long as she is dead.”
He requested a photo of the body, including a tattoo on the woman’s arm, as proof that she had been killed.
His intended target, an Idaho woman, was never harmed.
The two had met online in summer 2020 when both were administrators for a Facebook site related to the anime series “RWBY,” the arrest affidavit stated. She came to Los Angeles to meet Berkett in October 2020; he was living in his parents’ Beverly Hills home, so she stayed in a hotel for three days.
When she returned home, she tried to end the relationship; she later told investigators she was put off by his sexually aggressive behavior. But for six months, Berkett refused to accept the break-up and continued to contact her on multiple social media platforms.
Finally, in April 2021, a relative of the woman’s texted Berkett’s father to say police would be called if the son didn’t drop the matter.
A texted response purportedly from the younger Berkett said, “Consider this matter closed.”
Two days later he allegedly reached out to a group that advertised murder for hire on the dark web, a network of encrypted internet sites dealing in illicit goods and services.
The murder-for-hire operation was apparently a scam, the FBI said, and information about the request was relayed to an investigative media organization that in turn alerted law enforcement.
On May 19, 2021, an FBI agent pretending to be the hired killer contacted Berkett on WhatsApp and then in a phone call, and they discussed the “contract.”
On instructions from the agent, Berkett went to a Rite-Aid near his parents’ home and sent $1,000 from a Western Union kiosk as “a final payment.” During the transaction, he was under surveillance by the FBI. He was arrested the following day.
Prosecutors say that while in jail, he tried to solicit help from dark web contacts in making it seem as if he had been framed.
In June of this year, he pleaded guilty to one count of use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire. He has been in federal custody since his arrest.
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