In 2022, 25-year-old Scott Berkett from Beverly Hills, California, pled guilty to hiring a hitman to murder his ex-girlfriend, Riley Elder.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, he paid about $13,000 in bitcoin for her murder after she wanted to end their brief relationship.
They met online in early 2019 while they were both administrators for a Facebook group about their favorite anime show. Riley lived in rural Idaho, and Scott lived in Beverly Hills. They decided to meet in October 2020. Riley flew to Los Angeles to see him.
On her first night there, Scott allegedly coerced her into sleeping with him. After that trip, Riley tried to break it off with Scott multiple times and described his behavior as aggressive. However, he wouldn’t leave her alone and started harassing her online.
“He wasn’t only messaging her; he was messaging their community as well and eventually ended up turning some of them to his side,” said Jamie Elder, Riley’s mother.
When Riley’s older sister found out about the harassment, she called Scott’s father in April 2021, demanding that his son stop bothering Riley.
On April 28, 2021, Scott messaged a group on the dark web and hired a hitman to take out Riley. He gave out all her details and said that he wanted the killing to look like an accident.
He also asked for her phone to be recovered and destroyed permanently. Federal prosecutors found that Scott paid $13,000 in bitcoin between April 5 and May 5.
When Carl Miller, a journalist from the U.K., stumbled across the backend of this website, he realized that hundreds of kill orders had been made within it.
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After doing some more digging, he discovered that the website was designed to scam people out of their money, but the hits were ordered by people who really wanted someone else dead.
He was the one to alert American authorities of the threat against Riley.
The FBI had Riley pose for fake photos showing the proof of her death. An undercover police officer pretending to be a hitman contacted Scott, who confirmed that the photos were of Riley.
He paid another $1,000 for further proof of her death before he was arrested in May 2021.
While Scott was detained, he offered another inmate $10,000 to remove any evidence connecting him to the murder-for-hire plot. The inmate reported him to the authorities.
Scott pled guilty to one count of use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire. Several character witnesses testified in his defense. He faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison, but the judge sentenced him to only five years.
He did not serve the full five years and was released in October 2025 without the Elder family’s knowledge, even though they had signed up for a victim notification system meant to provide updates on his progress through the court system.
Riley and her family didn’t find out about his release until a month later.
To this day, Riley lives with anxiety and suffers from nightmares. She is slowly improving, but she still has a long road ahead of her.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
