A man from Alaska is facing the prospect of spending his remaining years in prison after being manipulated into committing murder by a catfisher who falsely promised $9 million. This man, living in his grandparents’ basement, deceived others into his scheme.

Kayden McIntosh, now 22, was sentenced to 85 years in prison, with 15 of those years suspended, leaving him to serve 70 years. He was the last of six individuals to receive sentencing for the 2019 murder of 19-year-old Cynthia Hoffman. The group lured her to a waterfall near Anchorage, where she was bound with duct tape, shot in the head by McIntosh, and her body discarded in a river.

During the sentencing, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Andrew Peterson stated, as reported by the Anchorage Daily News, “Mr. McIntosh wasn’t the mastermind but was actively involved in planning Cynthia Hoffman’s murder and fully aware of the intentions.” The judge emphasized that the act was not impulsive but a calculated murder.

Last year, McIntosh pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. His plea agreement set a sentencing range of 30 to 85 years. Although Cynthia Hoffman’s family hoped for the maximum sentence, they found the imposed sentence satisfactory.

“He’ll be an elderly man by the time he’s released,” Don Hoffman, Cynthia’s uncle, remarked to the Daily News.

McIntosh’s defense requested a 30-year sentence, portraying him as a misguided youth who fell in with a dangerous crowd. He expressed remorse to Hoffman’s family during the proceedings.

“I know that doesn’t cut it,” he said, per the Daily News. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I’m trying to take accountability for this.”

The man behind the plot is Darin Schilmiller, now 27. Ahead of Hoffman’s June 2019 death, Schilmiller had posed online as a man named “Tyler” and offered Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer — then 18 years old and purportedly Hoffman’s “best friend” — $9 million if she kidnapped and killed Hoffman and send him photographic proof. Schilmiller pretended to be a rich man with fantasies of seeing a woman murdered.

Darin Mitchell Schilmiller (Alaska Dept. of Law) and Cynthia Hoffman (Anchorage PD)

In actuality, however, “Tyler,” aka Schilmiller, was a broke, unemployed Indiana resident living in his grandparents’ basement. He pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation to commit murder in the first degree, and also a federal charge of conspiracy to produce child pornography for asking Brehmer for child sexual abuse material. A judge previously sentenced him to 99 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 45.

Brehmer pleaded guilty to one count of murder in the first degree. The judge sentenced her in February 2024 to the maximum term of 99 years with no time suspended.

Another defendant, Caleb Allen Russell Leyland, now 26, pleaded guilty in November 2024 to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 40 years in prison with 10 years suspended. Two other defendants were processed through the juvenile courts.

Prosecutors said Leyland, enticed by the allure of $500,000, gave Brehmer and the then-16-year-old McIntosh the car they used to trick Hoffman into taking a trip to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in Chugiak, on June 2, 2019, and then going on a hike through Thunderbird Falls. There, Brehmer bound Hoffman with duct tape — all while taking photographic proof for her perceived benefactor.

Denali Brehmer enters a plea for the murder of Cynthia Hoffman in an Anchorage court on Feb. 15, 2023. The victim considered the defendant her “best friend.”

As previously reported by Law&Crime, authorities first arrested McIntosh in connection with Hoffman’s death. Police said he quickly confessed to being one of Brehmer’s accomplices in the murder — but insisted Brehmer brought the gun.

“[T]he three of them agreed to duct tape each other and take photographs,” Anchorage Police wrote in a probable cause affidavit following their interview with McIntosh. “[Hoffman] was bound by her ankles and wrists with duct tape. She also had grey duct tape placed over her mouth. However, [Hoffman] started to panic. They removed the duct tape from [Hoffman’s] mouth and hands. [Hoffman] began to tell them she was going to call the police and tell them they had kidnapped her and sexually assaulted her.”

McIntosh said he “blacked out,” but remembered shooting Hoffman and tossing her in the river.

Prosecutors had asked for a maximum term of imprisonment of 75 years with 25 years suspended for Leyland while his attorneys asked for 35 years with 10 suspended. At sentencing, prosecutors said Leyland was just as culpable as his co-defendants.

“He gave that assistance, and he gave that assistance knowing what’s going to happen,” Assistant District Attorney Patrick McKay said, according to NBC affiliate KTUU. “The court has already found this was a premeditated contract killing.”

In cruel irony, Hoffman’s father died in a motorcycle accident on June 2, 2024, five years to the day since his daughter’s death. The family lamented both deaths.

“My niece’s life’s been taken, her father followed five years later, on the same day, laid his bike down,” her uncle Robert Hoffman said, according to KTUU. “Now he’s with her but he died of a broken heart. We’re here to see this through. This is a tragedy. No matter what part you play in a crime, you’re just as responsible as the one that committed it the most.”

Leyland apologized to the Hoffman family, reportedly saying “I cannot go back in time and I cannot change things in the past. But I really wish I did, none of this would have happened.”