Guilty Plea In Camden County Man's $20K Murder-For-Hire Plot Against Teen: Feds

HADDONFIELD, NJ — A Haddonfield man has admitted to paying a hitman $20,000 in Bitcoin in exchange for the murder of a 14-year-old child, federal officials announced Thursday.

John Michael Musbach, 31, pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with one count of use of interstate commerce facilities (the Internet) in the commission of murder-for-hire, said U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger. Musbach was before U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez in Camden federal court.

In summer 2015, Musbach exchanged sexually explicit photos and videos with a 13-year-old living in New York, said officials. The victim's parents found out and contacted police.

Musbach was arrested on child pornography charges in March 2016, authorities said previously. Two months after his arrest, he began communicating with a murder-for-hire website on the dark web that supposedly offered contract killings, authorities said. Read more — Haddonfield Man Tried To Have 14-Year-Old Killed For $20K: FBI (from April 2021)

"Musbach decided to have the victim killed so that the victim could not testify against him in the pending criminal case," Sellinger said.

He paid the website administrator 40 Bitcoin (approximately $20,000 at the time) for the hit, after the administrator assured him 14 was not too young to target, Sellinger's office said.

The site's administrator asked for an additional $5,000 after Musbach followed up several times, officials said. Per Sellinger's office, Musbach eventually tried to get his money back, and the website administrator "revealed that the website was a scam and threatened to reveal Musbach’s information to law enforcement."

Musbach faces a maximum potential penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of the greater of $250,000, twice the gross profits to Musbach or twice the gross losses to the victim of his offense.

As Patch's Anthony Bellano reported:

Officials said Musbach was an Atlantic County resident when he was arrested on the child pornography charges. Officers seized his cell phone and business laptop during the execution of a search warrant at his home.

Musbach admitted to having sent sexually explicit images and videos of himself to the victim and having requested and received sexually explicit images and videos from the victim, all while knowing that the victim was 13 years old, officials said.

In 2017, he pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child by sexual contact and was given a two-year suspended sentence with parole supervision for life.

In 2019, a cooperating informant began providing information to agents from Homeland Security Investigations in St. Paul, Minnesota, authorities said. This included information about Musbach's attempts to have the child killed.

By then, the original communication had been scraped from the website, but the informant had original copies, authorities said.

Agents were able to confirm Musbach's identity and link him to the screen name used in the alleged murder-for-hire scheme, authorities said. They were also able to trace the flow of money from Musbach's account used in the scheme.