An exclusive report from Forbes uncovered that the FBI used a Department of Homeland Security  source who was previously convicted of a “child sexual abuse material crime.”

In the investigative report, it was revealed a woman by the name of Julia Coda who went by the online name Bonfire was arrested after she allegedly went on a dark web hitman-for-hire-site to offer thousands to anyone willing to murder a Louisiana man who Coda believed kidnapped her late sister’s daughter.

Unknown to Coda at the time, the site was a scam that took people’s money and also fed details to federal investigators.

A search warrant obtained by Forbes which led to Coda’s arrest revealed the government received evidence from a DHS source from a foreign national who is a convicted pedophile.

In the warrant, however, it makes no mention of the DHS source being previously convicted of having child exploitation materials but rather they simply label the source as an “HSI Source.”

Per Forbes:

In 2021, a person going by the username Bonfire offered to pay thousands to have a Louisiana man killed on a dark web hitman-for-hire site. They wanted it to look like an accidental drug overdose. But Bonfire was unwittingly walking into two traps. Not only was the site a scam — where the admins simply took users’ money and provided no hitmen — but it had also been hacked. Details of Bonfire’s illicit purchase were going to be passed along to federal investigators.

This is all according to a search warrant unearthed by Forbes, which detailed an investigation into the woman believed by the FBI to be behind the Bonfire persona: Julia Coda, a Los Angeles hairdresser and beautician school founder, who is accused of ordering the assassination on the target because she believed he had forcefully kidnapped her niece following the death of Coda’s sister earlier in 2021. Coda has pleaded not guilty and declined to comment.

Core to the government’s warrant is evidence provided by a hacker who’d breached the hitman-for-hire site. But this hacker has their own dark past. Acquired as far back as 2018 as a source by the Department of Homeland Security Investigations agency, they had been previously convicted of crimes related to child sexual abuse material in a foreign country, according to the search warrant.