An Assassination Job Got Passed Along by 5 Different Hitmen. Now All Are in Jail.

Five hitmen in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China have been arrested after they failed to murder a man whose killing was outsourced multiple times.

The Nanning Intermediate People’s Court found that real estate investor Tan Youhui allegedly hired hitman Xi Guang’an to murder a businessman, surnamed Wei, in October 2013, Sixth Tone reported.

According to courts, Wei sued Tan’s real estate companies over a conflict that arose after they collaborated. The nature of the conflict was not specified.

Tan allegedly paid Xi 2 million yuan ($283,000) for the murder but the latter outsourced the job to a man named Mo Tianxiang, who was allegedly paid half the price. It gets even more complicated.

Mo then passed the job on to another man, Yang Kangsheng, for 270,000 yuan ($38,000) upfront. Mo said he would give Kangsheng 500,000 more yuan ($71,000) once the job was done.

But Kangsheng also backed out and outsourced the job again to a Yang Guangsheng, who later passed it on to a man named Ling Xiansi. Almost six months after the initial deal, Ling was promised 100,000 yuan ($14,000) if he could accomplish the job.

But he couldn’t do it either. Instead, he met with Wei, the guy they were hired to kill, and told him that someone was out to get him. Ling helped Wei stage his death in order to tell Yang he completed the job.

Wei disappeared for 10 days and reported the six men to the police, upon returning, The Guardian reported.

In a Wechat post, the Nanning Intermediate People’s Court in Guangxi said that the six men “deliberately deprived others of their lives, and their actions constitute the crime of intentional homicide.”

The five hitmen, along with Tan, have all been sentenced to between seven months and five years in prison.

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