Supposedly John Gotti was the end of the Cosa Nostra in the United States. The Dapper Don and his high profile antics allowed authorities to shut down the majority of mob activities in the United States. There is still some activity but nothing like it once was. Gotti learned in prison that the mafia no longer had control or got special treatment. The Aryan Brotherhood had extorted the mob boss in prison. Since then what is left of the mob has been using their network to carry out contract killings. Most of the Itallian Mafia in the United States has gone legitimate opening Casinos and controlling unions. Most people are unaware of these changes and a group has taken it a step further but using the mafia or intelligence agencies names as a way of getting contract killings done by amateurs. This organization would scout for potential candidates to get sucked in to committing crimes they thought was for the mob or intelligence agencies like the CIA.
The new tactic was to profile potential candidates and convince them they are working for someone else. It didn't really matter if they got caught the information they had wasn't real. They would get paid for the jobs upon completion and provided with the resources they needed. Normally investigators use their crimes to flip them and work their way up to the top. John Taylor had a knack for attracting psychopaths and gaining their trust. His role was simply to find them and inject himself into their life as a submissive personality that they felt comfortable with. John would find out enough about them to decide if they were just talk or could actually be convinced to carry out actual crimes. His specialty was house cleaners which is a specific profile given to killers that think they are doing society a favor by taking out what they consider bad people. These were not actual serial killers they were just people with this world view that we're susceptible to manipulation. The actual serial killers often target prostitutes or have some kind of religious or moral driven quest. John was not sure who it was he was working for and figured the less he knew the better. He would just find these people and through conversations report the details of their life to his handlers. These people had certain traits that seemed to stand out for John.
A certain percentage of people who join the military do it for the possibility that they would get to shoot someone legally. This is a small percentage and most of them will never see combat and get the chance to live out their fantasy. John himself was not a psychopath but his dad who had died in prison was definitely. This is how John acquired the skills to find these people and make them comfortable around him. The people he worked for would often provide leads and he would find a way into their life. If they went to a shooting range for example he would show up with weapons that they were interested in. Most people don't spend several thousand dollars on a rifle but the chance to shoot one would be an instant way to find common ground and gain their trust. John learned to be a patient listener most of these people were extremely narcissistic and liked to talk about themselves and their world views. He wasn't looking for anyone delusional, he was looking for focused and well organized. John's handlers would take over once they were convinced the person was the right candidate. John's job after the handlers took over was to make sure the targeted individual would not disclose information to him. They would be told by the handlers that they were being watched and kept track of. With the information John collected it was easy to convince them that everything they did was being watched. Some of these people would respond better to being convinced they were doing a job for government agencies but the anti-establishment people were convinced they were working for criminal enterprises. Whoever they were definitely had an agenda of some kind. John just hoped he wasn't helping a foreign agency.
John figured everything he did was being watched and he would be a liability if he knew too much. He couldn't actually identify his handlers nothing about them standard out in the rare encounters. Most communications were done electronically on an encrypted website. If the information was especially sensitive he would pick it up at dead drops indicated on the website. John got involved in all of this after responding to an ad on a website. He thought he would be meeting a date but instead was lead to a file someone had gathered on him, possibly someone his dad knew in Prison or in his criminal career. The pay was good and gave John a lot of financial freedom despite being monitored. John had just picked up the newest file on a potential target. This target had actually been a descendent of a mafia family in the United States. A small time drug dealer who's hobby was long range shooting and load development. When this new target started investigating John things began to take an unexpected turn.