Sextortion | “In six hours, my son was dead”: the harsh testimony of the mother of a young man who committed suicide after being extorted on Instagram with his sexual photos

The mother of a teenager who committed suicide in the United States just six hours after being the target of online extortion is campaigning to raise awareness.

Jordan DeMay He died in 2022 after brothers Samuel and Samson Ogoshi contacted him via social media from Lagos, Nigeria, posing as an attractive girl their age, and then blackmailed him with her explicit photos.

Now, your mother, Jenn Butauses the TikTok account that Jordan created for him to warn young people about this type of criminals, mostly based in Nigeria.

Nigerian police told BBC News that any suggestion that these crimes are not being taken seriously is “laughable”.

The offenders, aged 20 and 22, posed as a girl and flirted with the 17-year-old via Instagram and sent him sexual photos before persuading him to share explicit images of himself.

After, They blackmailed him by asking him for money in exchange for not sharing his photos with all his Instagram contacts.

When Jordan told them he couldn’t send any more money and was thinking about suicide, the Ogoshi brothers told him, “Do it quickly or I’ll make you do it.”

The Ogoshis were extradited to the United States, pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Another man involved in the case is trying to avoid extradition from Nigeria.

“Less than six hours passed from the time Jordan began communicating with them until he finally took his own life”Jordan’s mother Jenn told BBC News from her home in Michigan, in the northern United States.

“There’s actually a kind of script online.

“And these people just go over that script and apply pressure.

“And they do it quickly so they can move on to the next person.because it’s all about volume.”

Sextortion is carried out mainly against boys or young men.

In April, two other Nigerian men were arrested after an Australian boy committed suicide after being the victim of sextortion.

In Japan, cases linked to Nigeria have increased.

And crime figures in the United States show that cases doubled last year, reaching 26,700and that at least 27 boys committed suicide in the last two years.

This week, technical officers from Nigeria’s National Cybercrime Center meet in London with the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) to discuss how to improve cooperation on cybercrimes such as sextortion.

Last month, the NCA issued a warning to children and schools about the rise in these threats.

According to the NCA, sextortion can come from foreign organized crime groups, mainly from some West African countries, but also from Southeast Asia.

According to authorities in the US, in March 2022, Jordan received an Instagram message from a user named “dani.robertts” who claimed they had mutual friends.

The chats became sexually explicit to the point where “Dani” asked Jordan for naked photos.

“He said, ‘Is this a scam?’ In fact, he asked the scammer this. And they. [dijeron] ‘No. No’. Of course. And then he sent a compromising photo and that’s when everything changed instantly,” Michigan Sheriff Greg Zyburt explained to local media.

“Dani” soon threatened to send the photos to Jordan’s friends and family “until they went viral” and asked the teenager to send her US$1,000.

Jordan’s parents later learned that their son sent “Dani” more than $300, although that did not stop the extortion.

They continued to pressure him and threaten to send his naked photos to his friends and family.

That’s when Jordan told “Dani” that he was thinking about taking his own life “because of you,” according to court documents.

“Good. Do it quickly,” “Dani” replied.

The teenager shot himself in his bed on March 25, 2022.

Jenn Buta fights alongside Jordan’s father so that other young people do not fall into the hands of criminals through social networks.

She says she has been contacted by other parents in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom whose children have been victims of these crimes.

“I get messages all the time from parents asking me what to do,” Jenn said.

“Sometimes they just want to tell me what happened to their son.

“And sometimes they thank me because they remember Jordan’s story and come ask me for help.”

Among the advice that Jenn and authorities often give to people who are subjected to sextortion are:

• Remember that you’re not alone and? It’s not your fault.
• Report the attacker’s account through the platform’s security option.
• Block the predator so he doesn’t contact you
• Save the profile or messages: they can help authorities identify and stop the predator.
• Ask a trusted adult or the authorities for help before sending money or more images.
• Cooperating with the predator rarely stops blackmail and harassment, but the authorities can achieve it.

Cybersecurity researchers affirm that these crimes are usually related to Yahoo Boys of Nigeria, named for a wave of scams they carried out against Yahoo users in the early 2000s.

Earlier this year, an analysis by the American company Network Contagion Research Institute revealed a network of Nigerian TikTok, YouTube and Scribd accounts that shared tips on how to blackmail teenagers.

The director of the Nigerian Cybercrime Centre, Uche Ifeanyi Henry, told BBC News that his agents are “giving harsh blows to criminals“and defended his work to stop the wave of crime.

“People who think Nigeria is not doing enough is laughable,” he said.

That the government is investing millions of dollars in a state-of-the-art cybercrime center shows that it is taking the problem seriously.

“We’re dealing criminals a very serious blow,” Henry said.

“Many have been prosecuted and arrested.

“Many of these criminals are now moving to neighboring countries because of it.”

Sextortion cases continue to rise, and Nigerian teenagers are also being targeted.

But Criminals are not a problem unique to Nigeriaand to combat them, everyone’s support is needed.

However, according to Tombari Sibe of Digital Footprints Nigeria, cybercrimes, which include sextortion, have become normalized among the large, technology-savvy young population.

“The main triggers are social and economic in nature,” he says.

“There is also the big problem of unemployment and poverty.

“For all these young people who don’t have much it has become a common activity and They don’t think too much about the consequences“.

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