Irish suspect linked to McCarthy-Dundon gang due in court in Cyprus over hitman-for-hire plot
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What is the Irish suspect’s alleged role in the Cyprus hit‑for‑hire plot?
An Irishman has been arrested as part of an investigation into a bizarre assassination plot undone by an undercover cop who infiltrated a major violence as a service network. The 33-year-old from Limerick is in custody in Cyprus as details of an extraordinary Nordic network of disposable young hitmen have come to light. Crimeworld, a podcast from Crimeworld.com This is the second podcast I've done this morning where I've wondered Um What the hell is going on in the world, in a way? Um, great story. You've been working on this for a while and actually we're able to talk a little bit more about it. We did actually record something. Um we were a little bit limited in what we could say, but it's the story has developed.
Yeah. So what has been happening in Cyprus?
Yeah, it's a strange one. Um Like it it was first picked up by uh uh Philo News or Phileet News, who are a local news outlet in Cyprus and it was um At that stage, uh it was on the twenty eighth of August, you had three people have been arrested over this plot to kill somebody on the island and one of them one of the people arrested was a thirty three year old Irishman. Uhhuh. Now there was uh very few details at that stage except that it was being described as um one of these uh violence as a service plots. Um and to explain that it's basically where People have learned how to gamify almost, um, hiring hitmen to carry out um and or not just hitmen, but other people to carry out uh violence um against certain targets.
And it originated mostly with Swedish organized crime gangs. Now, in this case in Cyprus, um what happened was there had been an undercover cop who had been basically hired as a hitman by this criminal network who we don't really know a whole lot about exactly who was behind it. Uh and so this undercover cop who uh uh um some people in Cyprus believed was a genuine hitman, um, he met there. The allegations against the Irish person is that he was involved in placing a package of money somewhere for this guy to collect.
Uh-huh.
Um he he apparently according to various reports, he's denying that, that he had met up with some Norwegian people who became friendly, and one of them promised him some money to deliver a package. And that's how he got inveigled into this. Um now the the i it's it's um It it's just it's been developing slowly. Yeah. Like, you know, like there's been a certain amount of information coming out from the the Cyprus police. I've emailed them a few times and they've confirmed stuff and you know, and and kind of uh uh and and and gave us some details, for instance, like that they believed that it was eighty five thousand euro was the was um the amount of
money being put up. For this and this was gonna be paid to this what they didn't realise was a an undercover cop.
Exactly, yeah. So
And how did he infiltrate this s network? Was it on the dark net? Was it one of these sort of
No, they seem to be like from from what we we know about violence as a service, and particularly kind of that's supposed the model that originated in Sweden, it's a contact is made through various means. Sometimes it's um, you know, online chat messages through games themselves. Like there's various of these massive online um uh you know uh these players, a huge amount of people are on, and there's they have their own messaging systems within them. And then people will switch to telegram. program or they'll switch the signal, which in this case they actually switched the signal once somebody was the game. The games
they're playing presumably are, you know, sort of hitman type games.
Quite
possibly.
Quite possibly. I mean, like there there's a little bit of th there was a a thing or r uh not a thing, there was Operational Task Force Grim was set up last year in twenty twenty five and it was in i it's it's been uh coordinated through Europol, but it was led by Swedish police at the start. Uh and they were kind of going they they they were Lo looking at the way it worked, um, you know, so in one case there was a kid uh who who met somebody in a in a in a kid's home and uh and and and then from there he was introduced to another recruiter who in turn then handed him over to a handler who in turn was answering to a f person further up the chain who was obviously the contact, you know, with
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the Irish suspect’s alleged role in the Cyprus hit‑for‑hire plot?
0:02–5:30
2
How did the undercover police officer infiltrate the ‘violence‑as‑a‑service’ network?
5:30–10:17
3
What is the structure of the Nordic ‘disposable hitman’ model?
10:17–15:36
4
Who are the key players behind the network – from Norwegian recruiters to the alleged Iranian backers?
15:36–19:37
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Crime World
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