A Haddonfield man who sent explicit photos to a 14-year-old pleaded guilty to trying to hire a hitman to kill him
John Michael Musbach, 31, faces up to a decade in prison after pleading guilty in federal court in Camden to murder-for-hire.
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A 31-year-old Haddonfield man admitted Thursday that he spent $20,000 in bitcoin to try to have a 14-year-old boy killed after learning he was under investigation for trading sexually explicit photos with the teen.
John Michael Musbach, 31, pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire in federal court in Camden and faces up to a decade in prison, prosecutors said.
Musbach’s attempt to hire a hitman never came to fruition, but he was persistent in trying to carry it out. Prosecutors said he sent messages to administrators of a purported contract-killing website in 2016, setting the terms and price and then checking to see if the child had been slain.
“The target would be 14. Is that an acceptable age or too young?” he asked in one message, according to court documents. “I can budget up to $20k for the order.”
Musbach’s attorney, Rocco C. Cipparone Jr., said Thursday that Musbach “made the decision to put this matter behind him and move forward in a positive direction. He accepted responsibility before the court today, and will now start focusing on sentencing aspects of the case.”
Musbach’s crimes began in 2015, prosecutors said, when he started exchanging sexually explicit photos and videos online with the boy, then 13. That September, court documents say, the teen’s parents found out and told police in New York, where they lived.
Musbach — then living in Galloway, N.J. — was arrested in March 2016 and pleaded guilty the following year to endangering the welfare of a child.
But in between his arrest and conviction, federal prosecutors said, Musbach began his attempt to hire a hitman online to prevent the teen from testifying against him.
He paid $20,000 in bitcoin to the murder-for-hire website Besa Mafia, then scrambled to come up with extra money when the site’s administrator said he needed more cash.
In May 2016, court documents said, the site’s administrator wrote to Musbach saying: “Our site is a scam” while trying to blackmail Musbach for more money.
Federal agents discovered Musbach’s online activity in 2019, prosecutors said, and he was charged in 2020.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in June.