Two brothers from Nigeria accused of blackmailing a Michigan homecoming king — and ultimately goading him to suicide — were sentenced on Thursday in federal court to more than 17 years in prison.
In March 2022, Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, 24 and 21, used social media to coerce Jordan DeMay, a high school student from Marquette, into sending nude photos of himself and then blackmailed him with the images. From Lagos, the brothers used a hacked Instagram account to pose as an American teenage girl and persuade DeMay to send the explicit content to them. DeMay, 17, killed himself fewer than five hours later.
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The Ogoshi brothers targeted more than 100 victims in the US via social media, including 11 minors, according to Mark Totten, US Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, who prosecuted the case. “There is no doubt this case has been a wake-up call for America,” Totten said in a news conference. “To criminals who commit these schemes: you are not immune from justice. We will track you down and hold you accountable, even if we have to go halfway around the world to do so.”
That’s what happened in this case. The Marquette County Sheriff’s Office investigated DeMay’s death and issued a warrant to Instagram owner Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Instagram, to obtain a transcript of DeMay’s messaging history in the lead-up to his death. Those messages revealed the ruthlessness of the Ogoshi brothers’ sextortion scam.
Immediately after receiving DeMay’s nude selfie, they threatened to send it to his girlfriend, parents and football teammates unless he paid them. DeMay transferred all the money in his bank account to them through a cash app. When the brothers told him that wasn’t enough, he wrote that he was going to kill himself. Their reply: “Good. Do that fast. Or I’ll make you do it. I swear to God.”
In the first case of its kind, the FBI tracked the hacked Instagram account to the two brothers in Lagos. Last summer they were extradited to Michigan to face trial. In April, they pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sexually exploit minors as part of an international sextortion ring.
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This case and the growing threat of sextortion, or sexual extortion, was the subject of an April Businessweek story that linked the crime to the deaths of more than two dozen teen boys. The FBI says sextortion is one of the fastest-growing crimes targeting children in the US. Many of the cases have been linked back to Nigeria, a hotspot for internet scams.
The Ogoshi brothers will face five years of supervised release after serving their 210-month sentences in federal prison. Another Nigerian man, Ezekiel Robert, has been charged with DeMay’s death and awaits extradition to the US. (Robert has appealed, and the matter is before the Nigerian High Court.) Five US-based defendants have also been charged for conspiring to commit money laundering to facilitate the sextortion scheme that led to DeMay’s death.
Multiple other suicides tied to sextortion scams are under investigation in the Western District of Michigan, Totten said during the news conference. “Today is a critical reminder for all of us,” he said. “We carry phones or hand them to kids and they can be dangerous and a means to connect us to criminal networks around the world.”
The case is US v. Ogoshi, 22-cr-00025, US District Court, Western District of Michigan (Marquette).
