Nearly two years ago, Tonya, a mother and yoga instructor in suburban Atlanta, was in a state of disbelief when she learned that her fiancé, a respected doctor, had paid to have her killed.
The couple shared a seven-year-old daughter and were engaged, with a nearly four-carat diamond ring worth about $100,000 as apparent evidence of Dr. James Wan's commitment to the relationship.
But although they presented a happy face to the world, Wan had a dark side that his patients never saw – the heavy drinking, gambling addiction and abusive behavior within the home.
In May 2022, Tonya was at Wan's bedside in the hospital after he broke his ankles in a mishap at a school event for her daughter when a nurse took her aside and told her that there were visitors waiting in the hospital's chapel to come along to speak to her.
She learned that the visitors were FBI agents, and the news they shared would turn Tonya and her daughter's lives upside down forever: Wan had more than $25,000 via the dark web made payments to hire a hitman to kill her.
Tonya, a mother and yoga instructor in suburban Atlanta, breaks her silence after her fiancé, Dr. James Wan, tried to hire a hitman to have her killed
Tonya shared a daughter with Wan, born in 2016, and the two were engaged when he hired a hitman to kill her
Last week, Wan, 52, was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison after admitting he planned the assassination attempt on his 37-year-old fiancée.
In an exclusive interview with , Tonya breaks her silence about the ordeal and reveals for the first time what may have been the cause of the twisted murder plot.
She has asked that her last name be withheld as she continues to fear for her and her daughter's safety after her name, address and photos were published on a dark web marketplace for assassins.
A lawyer for Wan, who declined to comment after his guilty plea in October, has not responded to further requests for comment from .
“He hid behind his white coat and got away with so many things,” Tonya said of Wan, speaking from her home in the upscale Atlanta suburb of Duluth.
'Never judge a book by its appearance. You have no idea what kind of hell I've been through – just because he wears scrubs and is a doctor doesn't mean he's a good person.”
How warning signs appeared in a fairytale romance
Tonya first met Wan around 2014 when she was working at a resort on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where the Georgia doctor often visited to try his luck at the casinos.
At first they were just friends, then they started meeting long distance. They both had children from previous relationships and Tonya wanted to take things slowly before doing anything serious.
“He was a gentleman. He was nice. “I never saw him get mean,” she recalls of their early relationship. “That's why I fell in love with him originally, he was very nice. “But he also has a very dark side to him.”
After seeing each other from a distance for two years, Tonya agreed to move to Georgia to start a new life with Wan.
Although there were many good times – the holidays, the presents, the nice dinners – Tonya says she soon recognized warning signs in Wan's behavior.
“I noticed that all of our outings were near casinos or drinking alcohol,” she says. When she suggested other vacations, such as a ski trip, he always found reasons not to go, she recalled.
When her daughter was born in 2016, she hoped fatherhood would encourage Wan to develop and take responsibility. In reality, however, this was not the case, she says.
Over Labor Day weekend in 2017, the couple was vacationing in North Carolina and visiting a casino in the Blue Ridge Mountains when Tonya says Wan became out of control.
Tonya first met Wan around 2014 when she was working at a resort on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where the Georgia doctor often visited to try his luck at the casinos
Tonya says when her daughter was born in 2016, she hoped fatherhood would encourage Wan to grow and take on responsibility
Tonya's now seven-year-old daughter still doesn't know that her father has pleaded guilty to attempting to murder her mother. The family is seen together at Disneyland
Tonya says Wan had a “dark side” and was a heavy drinker and compulsive gambler
“I didn't even want to take this trip,” Tonya recalls of the vacation at Harrah's Cherokee Casino Resort in far western North Carolina.
“We were in therapy. And I said, “No, because every time you say it's going to be different, it's never different. You always get really drunk. You're throwing away a lot of money and you're toxic. You don't know how to get away.” “'
But after months of debate, Tonya gave in and agreed to the trip on the condition that Wan would agree to leave the casino at a set time. But when it was time to leave, he initially refused and then exploded in anger, she says.
Instead of driving back to her hotel across the street from the casino, Wan, who had been drinking heavily, turned the other way and began driving up a mountainside, she says.
“I just immediately had a bad feeling,” she remembers. She pleaded to be let out of the car but said Wan cursed and shouted and then abruptly jerked the steering wheel to the left, causing the car to veer off the road and down a steep embankment.
“All I can think about is, ‘Stay awake, stay awake, don’t hit your head and get out of the car.’ And that’s what I did,” Tonya says. She shouted at Wan to get out, but said he refused and told her to leave him behind.
“I thought, no, we have a daughter, get out,” she said. “So I dragged him out of the car. I don't know how, but I pull him up the hill and as soon as we get to the top the car explodes.'
Photos of the aftermath show the twisted, burned-out wreckage of the vehicle. Wan was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, but the case was dropped years later, Tonya says, after the arresting officer left the department and couldn't be found as a witness.
Police records confirm Wan's arrest in Jackson County on September 2, 2017. The Jackson County Sheriff's Department did not respond to a request for further information on the case.
Wreckage is seen after Wan drove his car off a mountain road in North Carolina. Tonya says he got angry after she asked him to leave a casino and drove off the road
Photos of the aftermath show the twisted, burned-out wreckage of the vehicle. Wan was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, but the case was dropped years later
Although the couple survived the accident with cuts and bruises, the psychological impact was lasting for Tonya, who sought professional help for her post-traumatic stress disorder.
Tonya says to this day she's not sure if Wan intended to kill them both in an accident or if he simply made a drunken miscalculation because he was angry about being forced to close the casino leave.
“He deliberately shook the steering wheel. “I don’t know what his intentions were,” she says. “I don’t know what he was thinking.”
Wan hatches his murder plot
After the 2017 accident in North Carolina, Tonya says Wan stopped drinking for about a year and began regularly attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
She hoped this would be a new page in their life together, but at some point he began to slip back into his old habits, she said.
His drinking sparked arguments that turned into shouting matches, she said, adding that Wan sometimes threw objects around her house. (However, Tonya says that Wan didn't hit her.)
Although she considered leaving, she says Wan used his status as the family's breadwinner to keep her under his thumb.
“He would say, ‘Okay, how are you going to pay for a car now? How do you want to do that? “How are you going to pay a lawyer?” she says.
Over the years, the Duluth Police Department responded to domestic complaints at her home several times but did not arrest Wan, a department spokesperson told .
Tonya believes Wan's status as a doctor helped him avoid arrest.
“The very last time.” [the police] When they were called, they said, “Okay, you two just split up for the night,” Tonya says.
“I could tell by the way they were talking to me that they were looking at me like I was the problem because he was wearing a doctor's suit,” she added. “But that is not the case.”
A police spokesman said in a statement: “After reviewing the calls, reports and body camera footage, it was determined that there was insufficient evidence to establish probable cause for the arrest of Mr. James Wan.”
“The Duluth Police Department’s handling of these calls was within policy,” he added.
Over the years, the Duluth Police Department responded to domestic complaints at her home several times but did not arrest Wan
Tonya and James Wan are seen with their daughter, who is now seven years old
At the beginning of 2022 there were further strains in the relationship. Wan had recently suffered severe financial losses trading risky stock options and cryptocurrencies, says Tonya.
She also says she became aware that he was drinking at work through his messages with colleagues on a shared iPad at home.
Wan, an internal medicine specialist, had long had a lucrative job at a Vein Clinics of America location in Lawrenceville.
Tonya says she began contacting Wan's colleagues who she suspected were involved in or enabling his alleged workplace drinking, and threatened to report him to the medical board and human resources if he didn't seek professional help sought alcoholism.
“I had a moment where I swallowed my pride, as if I could no longer help and control this man.” And let him do the right thing and not put other people's lives in danger. I need help now and I asked them for help, but they just dismissed the whole thing,” she said of her pleas to his colleagues.
The conflict escalated when one of Wan's colleagues filed for a restraining order and accused Tonya of stalking, which she denied.
Tonya believes that Wan's fears that he would expose his drinking at work may have been the motive for trying to have her killed.
She also shared records with showing that Wan increased his State Farm insurance coverage on her $100,000 diamond engagement ring on April 20, 2022, days after Wan first sought a hitman .
A receipt shows Wan's transaction to receive $8,000 worth of Bitcoin on April 18, 2022, when he sent the first transaction to try to hire a hit man
On April 20, 2022, a few days after Wan first went after a hit man, he increased State Farm's insurance coverage on her diamond engagement ring (above), which was valued at $100,000
Prosecutors say that on April 18, 2022, Wan accessed a dark web marketplace via his cell phone and placed a contract for a hitman to murder Tonya, using her name, address, Facebook account, license plate number and provided your vehicle description.
In the order, Wan stated: “Can take his wallet, phone and car.” Shoot and go. Or take a car.'
Wan then attempted to transfer about $8,000 worth of Bitcoin as a 50 percent down payment on the hit to the dark web marketplace – but the funds apparently went to the wrong crypto wallet and were lost.
In a chat with the marketplace administrator two days later, Wan learned of his mistake and wrote, “Damn.” I guess I lost $8,000. I am now transferring $8,000 to an escrow account.'
Wan sent another Bitcoin payment worth $8,000 to the marketplace, and the marketplace manager acknowledged receipt and asked him if he wanted the murder to be committed as an “accident or a normal shooting.”
Prosecutors say Wan replied, “Accident is better.”
“What shocked me the most was the fact that he never told them to make sure our daughter wasn't in the car beforehand,” Tonya said.
“Our daughter would have been strapped into her car seat as she watched her mother bleed out and die.”
Then, on April 29, 2022, Wan sent another $8,000 worth of Bitcoins into the dark web marketplace's escrow account and posted a message on the forum requesting a status update on the hit.
“How quickly should the work be done? I have placed an order and am curious how quickly I would like it to be fulfilled? Is there a way to find out the progress? Is anyone at my location? he wrote.
After Bitcoin's dollar value fell, Wan transferred approximately $1,200 worth of the cryptocurrency into escrow on May 10, 2022 to maintain full funding, according to court documents.
In total, transfers to promote the property amounted to more than $25,000.
The FBI foils the plot and saves Tonya from harm
Prosecutors say the FBI received a tip about the assassination plot from a private citizen who passively monitored dark web forum posts but was not involved in running the marketplace or communicating directly with Wan.
When agents tracked down Wan, he was hospitalized after breaking his ankles while sliding down an inflatable slide at his daughter's school carnival.
With Tonya at his bedside, they hatched a plan to have a nurse take her to the hospital chapel where they could warn her about the conspiracy.
As she entered the chapel, filled with FBI men displaying their badges, Tonya had no idea what they could want from her.
“You’re a victim, I’ll tell you that,” one of the agents said immediately.
“Oh God, OK,” Tonya replied.
The FBI agent continued, “We have received information from many different sources, and some of those sources are in Georgia, that someone tried to have you killed, OK?” We call it a contract killing. And we presented evidence because sometimes it’s hard for people to believe.”
“We have a suspect in there, and that suspect is sitting upstairs in this room,” the agent said. “I just want you to digest that for a second.” “We have a duty to inform you that the money has been found and that money has been exchanged and that is why we are here.”
The agents showed Tonya messages that Wan had posted on the dark web forum with her photos and information, looking for a killer to kill her. She readily agreed to pick up her daughter and temporarily move into an FBI safe house.
“I was embarrassed most of the time. “I was embarrassed that I had given up my whole life and moved here with him,” she remembers when she found out about the conspiracy.
The hardest part for Tonya, who has no family nearby to rely on, was the abrupt transition to single motherhood
As Wan's plea agreement and sentencing unfolded, Tonya continued to fear for her own safety and that of her daughter.
Even today, she still takes elaborate security precautions at home, which she prefers not to talk about publicly.
The hardest part for Tonya, who has no family nearby to rely on, was the abrupt transition to single motherhood.
She still hasn't told the full story of Wan's crimes to her daughter, who believes he is in treatment for his alcohol and anger issues.
“I never wanted her to be mad at her father. You know, I never wanted that for her. “I wanted to protect his name, like as a father his image in her head,” says Tonya.
She still allows the young girl to video chat with Wan in prison and struggles with what exactly she should say to her when the time comes.
Wan, for his part, seems to be only gradually coming to terms with the seriousness of his crime.
At his sentencing on January 18, the judge reprimanded Wan for not directly apologizing to Tonya, who appeared in court to have her victim impact statement read out.
“I am truly sorry that you find yourself in this situation,” Wan wrote in an electronic message from prison to Tonya on January 22, days after she received a prison sentence of seven years and three months.
He added: “I see now that I have hurt you beyond repair. 'I hope you find someone who can treat you well.'