A Microsoft security engineer has been sentenced to seven years in prison for gaining access to a hitman on the dark web and orchestrating a murder plot against the parents of his adopted children.
Christopher Robin Pence, 42, of Cedar City, Utah, was sentenced Thursday in the Northern District of New York. He pleaded guilty to soliciting and paying for the murder of a 35-year-old man and 38-year-old woman in December last year.
Pence later admitted to FBI agents that he coordinated the couple’s murder in upstate New York because he believed child abuse was taking place in their Hoosick Falls home.
He first visited the darknet site in July 2021 using The Onion Router, a peer-to-peer overlay network that allows users to surf the Internet anonymously.
Documents reviewed by DailyMail.com show that Pence arranged the killings with another user and a website operator in exchange for about $16,000 in Bitcoin.
Christopher Pence, 42 (far right), was sentenced to seven years in prison for orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot on the dark web
He was arrested in 2021 at his $1 million property in Cedar City, Utah and was held in federal custody until his sentencing Thursday.
“The anonymous user provided the site administrator with the names, addresses and photos of the intended victims, as well as the manner in which the murder was supposed to occur,” a criminal complaint reads.
Pence said the murder took placethe impression must be given that it is an accident or a robbery gone wrong, and that, if possible, care must be taken to ensure that none of the three children known to be in the care of the intended victims are harmed is inflicted.’
He transferred the money using methods including a cryptocurrency wallet service that advertised itself as a means of protecting money transfers from prying eyes.
Investigators linked information from the cryptocurrency exchange account, including a date of birth and Social Security number, to Pence, who had access to the site through August 2021.
In an interview later that year, FBI agents told Pence that they had taken control of the assassination-for-hire site and had obtained the names of users, including his, from the site’s operator.
Investigators interviewed Pence’s intended victims in September 2021 and learned that his family had adopted five of their children, “and that there was an escalating dispute between the two families.”
Tensions were so high that the Hoosick Falls couple wanted to retain custody of their children and even reported Pence’s family to local child welfare authorities, documents show.
The complaint notes that the photos Pence provided to the site administrator matched those “provided by the intended victims to Pence and his family for use as a ‘baby book,’ featuring the children of the intended victims.”
Pence (third from left, back row) worked as a security architect for Microsoft at the time of his arrest
He and his wife, Michelle, adopted five children from an upstate New York couple who Pence later targeted in the murder scheme, believing they were abusing the children.
Agents executed a federal search warrant at Pence’s Cedar City home the following month to seize electronic documents.
At that point he admitted his involvement in the scheme.
Transcripts show that two officers chatted with Pence while sitting in a government-issued Chevy Tahoe on the morning of October 27, 2021.
One officer told Pence he was not under arrest and was “under no obligation” to talk to them.
“We’d appreciate your help, okay? I’m just trying to figure it out because obviously we’re here for a reason, right?’ the officer said.
That was enough to convince him. In 2018, Pence announced that he and his family, who lived in Washington at the time, were passing through Massachusetts for a six-week tour of the country.
His wife Michelle suddenly received a message from a woman pleading for help for her five children. The Pence family, including their own 10 children, agreed to meet the woman and pray with her.
Pence alleged that the woman said her children were not safe around her husband, who had introduced himself to other women.
“The mother basically said, look, I need a place for my kids to go, they’re not safe here,” Pence told officers.
‘So we left. We came to Massachusetts with ten kids and left with fifteen.”
Pence claimed that he began to distance himself from the children from their biological parents after the adoption, but the couple followed them to Texas and then asked for move their trailer to the family’s estate in Utah.
Property records show the seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom home and surrounding 20 acres are worth about $1 million.
Pence further alleged that one of the children had been abused through discipline by their biological parents and he refused to stand by any longer.
“With everything you deal with, everything you do, you are the protector of these kids, okay?” said an officer.
“You are the savior of these children, and you are doing this for the family, that is clear to me. I didn’t understand why before, but it’s very clear to me that you would do anything for these children.’
Pence seemed unconvinced. “Have I ruined my life?” he said.
When asked if he wanted anything from the house, the Microsoft engineer replied, “I’d like a time machine, if you have one.” He was arrested the same day.
When FBI agents swarmed his Utah home in October 2021, Pence admitted to his involvement in the scheme
His family continued to rally around him, while his wife Michelle urged GoFundMe donors to ‘pray for charges to be dropped’
Pence’s sister, April Foltz, organized the fundraiser on behalf of his family, including 10 of his and Michelle’s own children.
A website viewed by DailyMail.com shows that Christopher and Michelle Pence were actively looking for children to adopt, advertising themselves through a “family profile.”
‘We are open to children with a lot of special needs. We do not mind contact with the child’s biological parents (by email, phone, mail or in person) provided the parent is not abusing the child,” Michelle wrote.
She noted that her husband “works full-time for Microsoft as a computer network security engineer and has a flexible work schedule” and added that their sense of “morals” came from their “Christian beliefs.”
In the years leading up to his conviction, Pence’s family continued to rally around him.
His sister, April Foltz, set up a GoFundMe in December 2021 with several photos of Pence, Michelle and their group of children.
‘This is my brother’s family. They are a very happy, loving family. “He has been accused of a terrible crime that involved no harm or misconduct toward the children or his wife and involved no infidelity,” Foltz wrote.
She described Pence as a “solid provider” and explained that the ongoing case left them “no money to pay the mortgage, buy food and utilities, put gas in the car, etc.”
In a follow-up post, Michelle begged for prayers.
These include pleas for ‘favor with the guards and especially with the judge for release’ and ‘family unity during this difficult process’.
“And pray that the charges are dropped,” Michelle wrote.
Pence pleaded guilty to one count of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of an assassination plot on December 6, 2023.
After completing his prison term, Pence was sentenced to three years of supervised release.