A Utah man was sentenced to 7 years in prison on Thursday for using the internet to hire a hitman to kill two Rensselaer County residents who are the biological parents of his five adopted children.

Christopher Pence, 43, had pleaded guilty in federal court in December. He admitted that he between July 16 and Aug. 9, he used the Darknet to access a website that arranged contract killings. He paid about $16,000 worth of Bitcoin to facilitate the murder. Pence then provided the website administrator with the names, address and photographs of the intended victims and provided instructions to make it look like a botched robbery, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

The intended victims were not harmed. A source tipped off the FBI in Knoxville, Tennessee about the activity on the website and that information was passed along to the Albany office. They also traced the Bitcoin payments to an IP address associated with an account Pence maintained.

The motive stemmed from an escalating dispute between the two families. The intended victims desired to regain custody of their children and reported Pence’s family to local child welfare authorities, which angered him. Also, they disagreed over how the children should be raised or the personal choices and lifestyle of the intended victims, court documents said.