Anita Ogona
Two Nigerian brothers pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to s3xually exploit teenage boys through s3xual extortion, or “s3xtortion,” 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.
“I don’t know that there’s any amount of justice good enough for what these two men did to Jordan,” Jordan’s father, John DeMay, told Fox News Digital. “But I do believe that there is justice in this plea deal … to some degree, I guess. But overall, it’s just emotional. It’s hard to believe that we’re even in this situation.”
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.”
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.
The same night the Ogoshis started communicating with Jodan 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 k1ll himself.
“Good,” he wrote. “Do that fast. Or I’ll make you do it. I swear to God.”
U.S. Attorney Mark Totten for the Western District of Michigan said in a Wednesday statement that the Ogoshis’ “guilty plea represent an extraordinary success in the prosecution of international s3xtortion.”
“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,” Totten said.
S3xtortion 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 s3xtortion involving at least 12,600 victims between October 2021 and March 2023
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