A Georgia mother was targeted in a $25,000 murder-for-hire plan set up on the dark web by her respected doctor fiancé—and she still allows their little daughter to communicate with him from prison.
Tonya uncovered husband-to-be James Wan’s sinister plan against her when he was hospitalized after breaking his ankles at a May 2022 event at their child’s school.
Nurses removed the 37-year-old from Wan’s bedside to meet with a team of FBI agents in the hospital chapel, where they presented her evidence that Wan, 52, had placed a hit on her, she told the Daily Mail.
“‘You’re a victim, I’m going to tell you that,'” she remembered one agent saying.
“‘We have a suspect in that, and that suspect is sitting up in that room.”
“I just want you to ponder that for a second. We have a responsibility to inform you that was discovered, that money was traded, and that is why we are here.'”
Agents showed Tonya, whose surname was suppressed, the comments her alcoholic husband had posted on the dark web, including images of her and her vehicle plate information.
Wan wanted the killing to appear as an “accident.”
Federal officials learned about the plot after a private individual who was not engaged noticed the dark web forum and alerted the FBI.
“What was the most shocking to me was the fact that he never told them to even make sure our daughter was not in the car with before doing it,” Tonya told the Mail on Sunday.
“Our daughter would have been strapped into her car seat while watching her mommy bleed out and die.”
Tonya met him while working at a Mississippi resort, and she moved to Georgia to live with him in 2016.
“I was embarrassed that I had given up my whole entire life and moved up here with him,” she told the British outlet.
According to officials, Wan wired $8,000 in Bitcoin to the murder-for-hire marketplace as a 50% down payment but unintentionally moved it to the wrong cryptocurrency wallet.
Two days later, he would transfer an additional $8,000 to the correct recipient, who confirmed receipt.
The hitman then asked Wan how he wanted the murder done and whether he wanted it to appear like an “accident or normal shooting.”
“Accident is better,” Wan said, according to the US Department of Justice. On April 29, 2022, he wired another $8,000 from an escrow account and inquired, “How soon should [the] work be done?”
“Is there any way I may learn about the progress? Is there anyone in my area?” He wrote.
Weeks later, he would deposit another $1,200 into the escrow account.
Wan had tried to harm his fiancée before, she alleged.
Wan said that she pushed him to leave a North Carolina casino and that he then crashed their automobile in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Tonya was able to get Wan out and up the embankment before the vehicle detonated, she told the Daily Mail. He was arrested on suspicion of DUI, but the case was eventually dropped.
He quit drinking for a year, but then relapsed, resulting in a series of heated arguments in which he allegedly berated her for having less money than him, asking her how she’d “pay for a car now” and “how are you going to pay for a lawyer,” she told.
The policemen visited up at their home multiple times, but she believes his doctor’s position helped keep them away.
“He’s hidden behind his white coat and gotten away with so many things,” she told the publication.
“Just because he’s wearing scrubs and he’s a doctor does not mean he’s a good person.”
She believes Wan hired a hitman after she informed coworkers about his drinking habits.
The 54-year-old doctor was sentenced to more than seven years in prison last week, after admitting to the plot and pleading guilty in October.
Despite everything, Tonya has allowed Wan to keep contact with their small daughter while he remains in prison.
“I never wanted her to be furious with her father. I have never desired that for her. I wanted to maintain his name, like a father’s image in her mind.”
Wan has now apologized to Tonya after a court chastised him for not doing so during the Jan. 18 sentencing.
“I’m very sorry you’re in this position. I now realize I have caused you irreparable harm. “I hope you find someone who will treat you well,” he wrote in an email from prison on January 22.