Jordan DeMay (Photo provided by John DeMay)

Five individuals charged for their part in a Nigerian sextortion scheme that targeted more than 100 victims, including a Michigan teen who killed himself as a result, pleaded guilty, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Michigan announced Thursday.

The individuals, who were charged with conspiring to launder money extorted from boys and young men using sexually sensitive images by Nigerian criminals, were all Americans.

After the sextortionists coerced the victims into sending the images, they would extort them for money that was sent to the five U.S.-based money launderers through online payment systems, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Michigan. The five launderers would take their cut, 20%, and send the rest to a Nigerian individual they referred to as “The Plug”, who took a cut and sent the rest to the extortionists themselves.

But when the extortionists couldn’t get victims to send money, they would demand other things. This was the case for 17-year-old Marquette Senior High School student Jordan DeMay.

In 2022, in a matter of six hours, the Nigerian extortionists managed to extort sexual images from the teen and convince him to kill himself if he didn’t comply with their demands.

“He was tragically tortured,” DeMay’s father John DeMay said during a news conference to bring awareness to the issue of sextortion in 2024. “He was convinced and groomed into sending an explicit picture of himself, which he did and when that happened, the extortion started. It was vicious, it was consistent, it was methodical and it was purposeful.”

The launderers who pleaded include:

— Dinsimore Guyton Robinson, 29, of Huntsville, Alabama;

— Kendall Ormond London, 32, of Lithonia, Georgia;

— Brian Keith Coldmon, Jr., 30, of Peachtree Corners, Georgia;

— Jarell Daivon Williams, 31, of McDonough, Georgia;

— Johnathan Demetrius Green, 32, of Stone Mountain, Georgia;

The conspiracy offense carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence.

In recent months, Andrew Birge, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, has brought attention to the problem of sextortion in the modern age, noting that it too often can result in tragedy, like in Jordan DeMay’s case.

And in reflecting on the launderers’ role in this sextortion scheme, Birge said in a news release that “these individuals helped and profited from this awful, heartbreaking scheme and so they now will face the consequences.”

The Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been calling attention to the emerging threat of sexual violence online being perpetrated by utilizing sexually sensitive images to extort victims, also known as “sextortion.”

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