A convicted credit card thief and bank fraudster has pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder. He attempted to put out a contract on a federal informant. Pavel Igorevich Valkovich, 28, admitted last week that he discussed hiring a hit man to kill the unidentified informant in a drive-by shooting. He submitted his guilty plea the first day of his trial on the murder-for-hire charge. According to authorities, last January, Valkovich discussed paying a hitman $10,000 (.pdf) to kill the informant. In the conversation with someone he met in prison, he indicated that he wanted a silencer used in the murder. When authorities learned of the plot, Valkovich was transferred to another jail, where he approached someone else about killing both the informant and the person with whom he’d initially discussed the murder. This time, Valkovich offered to pay $40,000 for the murders, and ordered that one of the victims be beheaded afterward. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in February and is facing a maximum sentence of 50 years, which includes a possible 20 years for the solicitation charge and another possible 30 for the bank fraud conviction. Valkovich, who goes by the name “Pasha,” pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of bank fraud. He and Brian Cooper Dill, 37, were charged with conspiring to steal money from bank customers and wire it through PayPal accounts under their control. According to court records, Dill and the unidentified informant met while they were in federal prison. In July 2008, Dill met again with the informant, who ran an unspecified internet business, and demonstrated that he had access to Washington Mutual bank accounts containing $256,000. Dill explained that he was working with insiders at the bank who had access codes for employees at different branches, and could use them to change the phone number and address of bank customers. Dill wanted the informant to open a PayPal account so he could initiate money transfers from the victims’ bank accounts into the PayPal account. The bank insider would change the contact information to a phone number that Dill and his accomplices controlled, so if the bank called to verify the transaction, the thieves would receive the call. The transfers didn’t occur, but later Dill e-mailed stolen information for a Bank of America account for a business named MJN Investment Group. The data included the victim’s Social Security number, tax ID number, phone passcode, checking and savings account numbers, and other information. The informant was supposed to use the information to open a fictitious Pay Pal account using the victim’s name and money. By then, however, the informant was already in contact with agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), who recorded conversations between Dill and the informant. Dill then had $632,000 transferred from the victim’s bank account to the PayPal account. (Authorities later returned the stolen money.) The informant later met with Dill and Valkovich to discuss stealing money from three Washington Mutual accounts belonging to a business named The Cabinet Center, in Pleasanton, California. They planned to steal $450,000 from the accounts. Dill and Valkovich also indicated that they had access to 100 American Express credit card account numbers that were allegedly stolen from the database of a charter airline company. They had the cards’ expiration dates and verification codes, as well as the cardholders’ dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers. When authorities later moved in to arrest Valkovich, he tried to flee by jumping from the roof of his apartment building to a neighboring building. Source: WIRED