The (much better) BBC article says it was the victim who called the police: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50137450

The version I heard was that the fifth hitman contacted the victim-to-be, who agreed to fake his own death. That plan was foiled, leading to everyone in the chain getting caught. I have no idea if this is actually true, though; I think my source may have been a tumblr post.

I don't get why the last hitman got convicted of attempted murder if he didn't actually try to kill the guy.

From the article, which apparently here actually no one read:

> However, hitman number five was so incensed at how much the value of the contract had fallen, that he told the target to fake his own death, which eventually led to the police finding out about the plot, Beijing News reported.

Later in the very same article:

>The contract finally came to the fifth hitman, Ling Xiansi, who eventually told the police.

Which contradicts your quote and so the article really is unclear about this. jwilk probably actually read the article...

Thanks. I clicked the article but got an error. (Probably fixable by whitelisting in noscript, but I didn't feel like doing that.)

FWIW, the article works for me without enabling JS.

uBlock Origin allows easy turning off JS with one click (well, two as you need to reload the page).

> Did the 5th hitman contact the police himself? Or did they find out some other way? The article is unclear about this.

It's literally right there in the article..

> The contract finally came to the fifth hitman, Ling Xiansi, who eventually told the police.

Combined with the quote you posted in response to my comment, this does make the article (which didn't load for me) seem confusing. One one hand the fifth hitman 'eventually told the police', but on the other hand 'he told the target to fake his own death, which eventually led to the police finding out about the plot'. On balance it seems like hitman 5 didn't initiate contact with the police, but confessed when caught.