SC woman hired hit man to kill an ex-lover. But her shooter turned out to be an FBI agent

A 21-year-old Aiken County woman who sought a hit man on the internet’s dark web to injure or kill her former Lexington County lover pleaded guilty Thursday in Columbia’s federal courthouse to cyberstalking.

Kelsey Curles, who was 20 last summer when she surfed the dark web looking for a hit man but found herself speaking to an undercover FBI agent, will be sentenced at a later date by U.S. District Judge Mary Lewis.

Last fall, after numerous contacts with the FBI agent posing as a hit man, Curles indicated to him that she changed her mind, assistant U.S. Attorney Elle Klein told Lewis during a plea hearing Thursday.

“She said, ‘That’s not me,’” Klein said.

But, by then, Klein said Curles had sent numerous emails to her former lover and his wife, and posted their names and addresses on the dark web as she tried to hire a hit man. Curles also had made a down payment on the hit at a bitcoin automatic teller machine, Klein said.

And she requested to know the date of any hit attempt so she could be out of town on that date, Klein said.

Curles’ guilty plea was the result of a plea bargain in which the government agrees not to press other charges.

She faces a maximum of five years in prison for the crime of cyberstalking. Because of her lack of a criminal record and her age, she is likely to get a lighter sentence.

Alex Postic, the Columbia attorney who represents Curles, declined to comment Thursday except to ask that the privacy of his client’s family be respected.

Curles has been in jail held without bond since her arrest last November.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paige Gossett refused a request in February to let Curles out on bond.

Although Curles had a high school diploma, some military service and had recently made efforts to improve herself, the safety of her victims in this case could not be guaranteed, Gossett wrote in a March 2 decision.

The victims have not been publicly identified.

Postic told Gossett in February that if this incident had happened 30 years ago, Curles “would have been writing about this in her diary and not on the dark web,” the underbelly of the internet where users can find it easier to remain anonymous.

The dark web has a reputation for attracting unsavory people, including hit men, drug and arms trafficker and people engaged in child pornography. The FBI maintains a presence on the dark web, and commonly uses cyber sleuths to carry out stings of people looking to commit crimes.

FBI internet stings have been used to solve several high-profile cases in South Carolina.

They include a Lexington County prison inmate who thought he was talking to a Russian arms dealer when he ordered a mail-order bomb on the dark web to kill his former wife. The arms dealer was instead an FBI agent.

In 2019, the inmate, Michael Young, was sentenced to 43 years in prison.