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A United States Court has sentenced two Nigerian siblings to 17 years and six months in prison over sextortion.
Aside from the 17 years and six months, the two convicts, Samuel Ogoshi, 24, and his brother, Samson Ogoshi, 21, from Lagos, Nigeria, would also undergo five years of supervised release.
The two brothers were extradited to the US to be tried on charges of conspiring to sexually exploit multiple minors.
Their scheme led to the death of a 17-year-old high school student, the US Justice Department said in its announcement of the judgment on its Facebook page on Thursday.
The victim, Jordan DeMay, was a male school student in the state of Michigan.
Aside from DeMay, the Ogochi brothers were said to have exploited more than 100 victims, including 11 minors.
“These defendants sexually exploited and extorted more than 100 victims, including at least 11 minors, resulting in the tragic death of a 17-year-old high school student,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in the same Facebook post.
Also reacting to the judgment, US Attorney Mark Totten for the Western District of Michigan, said, “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,”
According to the details shared on its Facebook post, the Ogoshi brothers used hacked social media accounts to create fake profiles.
They also conducted online research about their victims to learn where they lived, attended school, worked, and the identities of their family and friends.
After their research, they solicited their minor victims to produce sexually explicit images of themselves, and once they received the images, they created a collage of pictures that included the sexually explicit image with other images of the victim and their school, family, and friends.
The Ogoshi brothers threatened to disclose the collages to the family, friends, and classmates of the victim unless the victim agreed to pay money using online cash applications.
The Ogoshi brothers were charged in November 2022 alongside Ezekiel Robert, also a Nigerian national, in connection with the sextortion scheme that led to DeMay’s death.
They were extradited to the US in August 2023 and pled guilty in April.
The third Nigerian Robert’s extradition is pending following an appeal in his home country.
