A US court has sentenced two Nigerian brothers, who targeted a 17-year-old in a sextortion scam, to 17 years and six months in prison.
Prosecutors said Samuel, 24, and Samson Ogoshi, 21, sent Jordan DeMay a friend request on Instagram, pretended to be a girl his age, and flirted with him.
The Ogoshi brothers lured DeMay into sending them explicit images and threatened to broadcast the pictures to his friends if he did not send them money.
Jordan sent as much money as he could and pleaded with the scammers, threatening to kill himself if they spread the images.
“Good… Do that fast, or I’ll make you do it,” the brothers replied.
The 17-year-old schoolboy killed himself less than six hours after they started talking on Instagram.
John DeMay, the deceased’s father, told Marquette federal court in Michigan that he still has nightmares after finding his son dead in his bedroom.
He said the family moved out of the house to escape the memory.
The brothers were extradited to the US in August last year to face prosecution over numerous cases of sexual extortion of young men and teenage boys on social media linked to them.
They pleaded guilty in April to conspiring to exploit teenage boys in Michigan and across the US sexually.
In a statement on Thursday, Merrick Garland, attorney general, said over 100 victims, including at least eleven minors, fell to the brothers’ scam.
“These sentences should serve as a warning that the perpetrators of online sexual exploitation and extortion cannot escape accountability for their heinous crimes by hiding behind their phones and computers,” Garland said.
“The Justice Department will find them, no matter where they are, and we will bring them to justice in the United States.”
At the sentencing, both brothers apologised to DeMay’s family.
“I’m sorry to the family. We made a bad decision to make money, and I wish I could change that,” Samson said.
Their defence attorneys said the brothers’ crimes were fuelled by drug abuse and the sextortion scam culture in Nigeria.
The judge said the crimes showed a “callous disregard for life,” especially as they continued targeting other victims even after learning that DeMay died.
It is the first successful prosecution of Nigerians for sextortion in the US, where it is a rapidly growing cybercrime, often linked to Nigeria.
In July, Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, said it had removed 63,000 accounts in Nigeria linked to sextortion scams.
