Nigerian brothers sentenced to prison for sex blackmail linked to UP prom king

Two foreign brothers were sentenced Thursday to 17 1/2 years in prison for sexually extorting an Upper Peninsula high school prom king who then committed suicide.

Samson and Samuel Ogoshi, ages 21 and 23, of Lagos, Nigeria, were convicted in U.S. District Court for the 2022 incident involving 17-year-old Jordan DeMay, a student at Marquette Senior High School.

It was the first criminal case involving financial sexual extortion, which has become an epidemic since DeMay’s death. Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading someone to send explicit photos online and threatening to make those photos public.

More: Sextortion Plague Takes Life of UP Prom King, Creates Advocates for Change

“Today’s sentence sends a powerful message,” said Mark Totten, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan. “To the criminals who commit fraud like this: You are not immune from justice. We will hunt you down and bring you to justice, even if we have to travel halfway around the world to do it.”

DeMay’s parents said they never thought this day would come. They believed the Ogoshis’ distance from the United States would keep them from falling into the hands of American law enforcement.

The Ogoshi brothers previously pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to sexually exploit minors that involved DeMay and 100 other teens and young men in Michigan and other states. A third man, Ezekiel Robert, 20, of Lagos, is appealing an extradition order in Nigeria.

Sextortion is one of the fastest-growing crimes against children, law enforcement and child exploitation groups say. Monthly reports of sextortion jumped from 100 in 2021 to 895 in 2022 and more than 2,200 in 2023, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia.

According to the FBI, DeMay is one of 27 sexual blackmail victims who committed suicide in the past three years.

During a news conference after the verdict, Totten said several sextortion-related deaths were under investigation. He said the large number indicated the need for the public to remain vigilant to avoid fraud.

A US attorney said teenagers and their parents need to be careful about using mobile phones because they could be linked to criminal networks around the world. He said criminals are impersonating others and people should be careful not to share compromising photos of themselves.

Cheyvoryea Gibson, FBI special agent in charge of Michigan, shares the federal prosecutor’s assessment.

“Raising awareness about sextortion is a top priority for the FBI in Michigan,” Gibson said.

Authorities were initially surprised by DeMay’s suicide, but Robert and the Ogoshi brothers also contacted his girlfriend, trying to blackmail her by threatening to spread a graphic photo of DeMay. The scammers used a hacked Instagram account called Dani Robertts. The girl told her parents, who called the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office contacted Meta, the owner of Instagram, and obtained records associated with DeMay and Robertts’ accounts. Those records provided Robertts’ IP address, which is a series of numbers that identifies a device on the internet. IP geolocation showed the device was located in Lagos.

The Ogoshi brothers were arrested by Nigerian authorities in January 2023 and extradited to Michigan seven months later, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan. They pleaded guilty in April.

In early 2022, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children began receiving hundreds of complaints about a new type of scam involving children. The FBI issued its first public warning about sextortion the day before DeMay was killed.

Scammers in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast used hacked Instagram accounts of teenage girls to befriend as many boys living near them as possible, according to a January report by the Network Contagion Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey.

According to the report, scammers targeted North American boys aged 14 to 17. The most commonly used platforms were Instagram and Snapchat.

The extortion starts with accepting a friend request. On Instagram, this gives the scammer access to your location, school, the names of people you follow, and those who follow you.

In DeMay’s case, the three con men went to work, according to the Ogoshi brothers’ plea agreement, which was included in their criminal case file. All three were logged into Robertts’ account.

While one man was texting DeMay, another was using Google and social media to learn more about him, like where he went to school, what classes he took, the names of his parents. He kept passing that information on to the person talking to DeMay.

A third man took screenshots of DeMay’s friends and family, using them to create a collage with an explicit photo of DeMay in the middle, according to the plea agreement. He also took a screenshot of a nude photo that was supposed to be sent to DeMay’s girlfriend in a direct message. He showed both screenshots to DeMay, threatening to press send.

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Nigerian brothers sentenced to prison for sex blackmail linked to UP prom king

By meerna

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Nigerian brothers sentenced to prison for sex blackmail linked to UP prom king

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