This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Two Nigerian brothers pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to sexually exploit teenage boys through sexual extortion, or "sextortion," two years after one such scheme led to a Michigan teenager's suicide.
Jordan DeMay was 17 years old when Samuel Ogoshi, 22, and his brother, Samson Ogoshi, 20, both of Nigeria, posed as a woman on Instagram using a hacked account and struck up a conversation with the teenager, ultimately blackmailing him into sending money and threatening him for more until he took his own life in March 2022.
"Today’s guilty pleas represent an extraordinary success in the prosecution of international sextortion," U.S. Attorney Mark Totten for the Western District of Michigan said in a Wednesday statement. "These convictions will send a message to criminals in Nigeria and every corner of the globe: working with our partners both here and overseas, we can find you and we can bring you to justice."
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He continued: "I hope these guilty pleas also bring a small measure of relief to the family of Jordan DeMay, who died as a result of this crime. Of course, the job is not done. The Ogoshi brothers await sentencing later this year, and we are still pursuing the extradition of the third defendant, Ezekiel Robert."
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The Ogoshi brothers face a minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years for each charge of conspiracy to sexually exploit minors. An indictment against the two brothers alleged they were involved in hundreds of similar schemes – many involving minors.
Robert, the third suspect charged in connection with the sextortion plot that led to DeMay's death, is awaiting extradition to the United States.
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The same night the Ogoshis started communicating with DeMay through Instagram, the teenager sent an explicit photo of himself to the account that he thought belonged to a woman. Samuel Ogoshi threatened to expose it and make it go "viral" online if Jordan did not immediately send money, prosecutors said. Jordan complied and sent the suspect money, but the crime only escalated from there as Ogoshi demanded more and more money from the 17-year-old.
The exchange went on for hours on a single night until Jordan told Ogoshi that he was going to kill himself.
"Good," he wrote. "Do that fast. Or I'll make you do it. I swear to God."
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Sextortion is a social media crime trend in which bad actors entice or solicit a minor to engage in sexual acts or send blackmail money, according to the FBI, which received more than 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion involving at least 12,600 victims between October 2021 and March 2023.
The average age of sextortion victims is between 14 and 17 years old, the FBI said in a press release earlier this year, but the agency noted that any child can become a victim. Offenders of financially motivated sextortion typically originate from African and Southeast Asian countries, according to the FBI. The FBI also saw a 20% increase in sextortion incidents involving minors between October 2022 and March 2023.
Sextortion can lead to suicide and self-harm. Between October 2021 and March 2023, the majority of online financial extortion victims were boys. These reports involved at least 20 suicides, the FBI said.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has created a free service called "Take it Down," which is meant to help victims of sextortion erase explicit images of victims or get bad actors to stop sharing them online. The tool can be accessed at https://takeitdown.ncmec.org.
