Tina Jones Pleads Guilty, Gets 12 Years In Bitcoin Murder-For-Hire Plot To Kill Lover's Wife
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Tina Jones, a nurse from Des Plaines, pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges she paid $12,000 in bitcoin to try to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill the wife of her lover, a co-worker with whom she was having an affair.
Jones, 32, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted first-degree murder, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison and three years of probation, during a hearing in DuPage County.
As part of the plea deal, prosecutors dropped six other charges against her, including four counts of solicitation of murder for hire and two counts of solicitation of murder.
DuPage County prosecutors have said less than two years after she was married, Jones began having an affair with a married man, a colleague at Loyola University Medical Center, where she worked as a registered nurse.
Sometime after the affair began, Jones was jilted by her lover, and that's when she allegedly turned to the dark web, a place to buy illegal services.
Prosecutors said Jones used a dark web browser to conceal her IP address and identity, and log on to a website called the Sicilian Hitmen International Network, and tried to hire someone to kill her lover's wife.
Jones allegedly provided the victim's address and photograph, as well as her lover's work schedule, with instructions not to harm the victim's husband. Over a period of three months, she paid $12,000 in bitcoin to have her lover's wife killed.
The scheme was intercepted when Woodridge police received a tip in April 2018 from the CBS News program 48 Hours, which had been working on a story about the sale of illegal services.
However, prosecutors said it turned out the website she accessed was a scam, and provided no murder-for-hire services.
After authorities confronted Jones about the plot, she admitted accessing the website to pay to have her lover's wife killed.
Jones was free on $250,000 bond before her guilty plea. She was taken into custody immediately after a DuPage County judge accepted the plea agreement, and will serve 85 percent of her sentence -- or just more than 10 years in prison.
She also must pay a $1,000 fine, a $1,000 "anti-crime contribution," and $7,712 in restitution to the victim.