MARQUETTE, Mich. – Local 4 sat down with the parents of a Michigan teenager who died by suicide while being blackmailed with a nude photograph on Instagram.
The parents of Jordan DeMay, John DeMay and Jennifer Buta, spoke to Local 4′s Kimberly Gill about their son and the dangers of social media.
Jordan, 17, was a student at Marquette Senior High School in March 2022 when three men from Lagos, Nigeria, convinced him to send a nude photograph of himself on Instagram.
The men posed as teenage girls and ran a conspiracy to convince boys to send naked pictures so they could sextort them for money, according to authorities. They threatened to send Jordan’s nude photo to all of his social media followers, family members, and friends.
Jordan was found dead on March 25, 2022. His death sparked an investigation that eventually led to charges against Samuel Ogoshi, 22, Samson Ogoshi, 20, and Ezekiel Ejehem Robert, 19.
Jordan’s social media use
DeMay and Buta said they kept a close eye on Jordan’s social media use, just as most other parents would.
“He had social media, but we kept social media from him for a very long time,” DeMay said. “We locked his phone down. We monitored his text messages for a long time. We monitored his usage, his phone. There were times where some of those things were getting worked around, as kids do, but we definitely monitored it hard.”
By the time their son was targeted by the Nigerian men, his parents didn’t consider social media to be much of a concern because he was almost an adult.
“He was six, seven weeks away from his 18th birthday, so at that point, he was already using Instagram a little bit,” DeMay said.
Finding Jordan’s body
On the morning of Jordan’s death, Buta said she woke up to a text message.
“I had received a text message from Jordan that said, ‘Mother, I love you,’ which wasn’t out of the ordinary because he would stay up late sometimes playing his games with his friends, and he happened to be going on vacation for two weeks that day, so it didn’t set off any alarms in my head that he texted me in the middle of the night,” Buta said.
Jordan was at his father’s house that night. Buta texted him back, but Jordan didn’t respond by the time she had finished getting ready for work, so she knew something was off.
She reached out to one of his friends and learned that Jordan wasn’t at school. That’s when she called DeMay to check on their son.
“She messaged me in the morning and asked, ‘Hey is Jordan at your house? Did he go to school?” DeMay said. “I had just gotten up. It was around 7:30. We were just getting up and our girls were mingling around, getting ready for the day before school.”
He said the message struck him as odd, because Jordan normally would have already left for school by that time. School began at 7:20 a.m., and on a typical day, Jordan would leave for school in the early morning and then go to work or practice before coming home to eat and go to bed.
“I got up and peeked out the window and saw his car in the driveway, which I thought was odd,” DeMay said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, he slept in today.’ Completely not like him. I think he’s only missed the bus once or twice his entire school age. I went into his bedroom and I found him in his bedroom, in his bed.”
DeMay said when he looks back, he remembers hearing something out of the ordinary that night.
“He shot himself at approximately 3:45 in the morning, and I happened to be up going to the restroom at the same time, and I heard the shot,” DeMay said. “But it didn’t compute with me. I was in the middle of the night half-sleeping. It startled me and I thought about it for a second and it just didn’t sound like a gunshot for sure. It was loud and I didn’t know if he just kicked something over in his room or spilled something or whatever, so I just went back to bed.”
How Jordan was sextorted
For two days, Jordan’s parents had no idea what had pushed him to kill himself. They were trying to figure out what happened.
Before Jordan’s death, the family was just about to leave for the beach, and that was one of his favorite vacations. The previous night, Jordan had packed his bags to prepare for the trip, DeMay said.
After a couple of days, it became clear that his death was linked to social media.
“The people that were speaking with Jordan on Instagram, they sent one of the photos to Jordan’s girlfriend at the time,” Buta said. “She contacted us and let us know, and we let the detectives know, and they took it from there.”
Jordan sent the Nigerian men money multiple times -- as much as $300. His parents said the sextortion went on for six hours.
“He received his first text message about a minute before he pulled in the driveway at 10:15 the night before,” DeMay said. “When he pulled in the driveway, we crossed paths in my patio out front of the house. I was running into my garage to put something in my truck, and I happened to run into him. That was the last time I saw him before I went to bed that night.
“He had just received his first text message, and all it said was, ‘Hi.’ They were grooming him for those hours. Simple conversations, slowly progressing into flirting and into more sexual type conversations, and basically got to the point where he sent a picture of himself to her.
“When that happened, it was lights out. It was a little after midnight. The tables turned and the extortion happened, and the pressure, and they pushed him hard.”
DeMay talked about how this wasn’t just one person with a computer targeting his son, but an organized conspiracy.
“These were adult males, multiple, three of them, conspiring together, working together,” DeMay said. “One is talking to Jordan. One is building fake pictures. The other is a money person. All of these people were working together that night to victimize Jordan.
“These three guys from the the other side of the planet came into my home while we were sleeping and murdered my son.”
Jordan’s parents said he had erased his Instagram account and gone to “great lengths” to hide what had happened. Everything was wiped from his phone.
“In the preliminary investigation, it was just a normal suicide,” DeMay said. “Everything was there. It was classic and case closed, until this one picture surfaced and changed everything for us.”
Sextortion awareness
Jordan’s parents said they were aware that scams like this exist, but they didn’t know they went to this level.
“Not to this extent, where they are pressuring young kids, young adults, and asking for the amounts of money that they are -- I had no idea that it was going to that point,” Buta said.
DeMay said there have been many scams over the years, and they’re always changing. He wasn’t surprised that something like this was going on, but didn’t realize how prevalent it has already become.
“I guess I didn’t realize that there was an actual term for it, ‘sextortion’ -- that was new to me,” DeMay said. “I wasn’t surprised that this stuff was happening, but I was a little bit surprised that it was already labeled. The FBI was already pretty well in tune with what it was and how it works.”
He said tens of thousands of families fall victim to sextortion, but those cases typically stay private because they’re embarrassed.
“In our case, this is the story that needs to be told, and people need to know about this,” DeMay said.
He said there will always be new dangers, such as people using AI technology to target people.
“This is just the beginning,” DeMay said. “Sextortion today is the flavor of the day. A couple years from now, most people won’t even know what that term is because they’re going to move onto the next scam.”
New purpose
“It’s been extremely difficult without him here for me, for my kids -- I’m sure the same for John and his family,” Buta said. “There’s still a part of me that thinks he’s going to come through my front door. ... I miss him every single day. Every single day.”
“Everything that you think matters doesn’t, and not having him there, not seeing him graduate, not starting to think about having his relationships turn into a marriage and grandkids soon ... all these things that we were kind of preparing for in the next level of life, we don’t get to have,” DeMay said.
DeMay said he was looking forward to being able to become more of a friend to his son than a parent in the coming years.
“It’s just been extremely difficult emotionally, physically,” DeMay said.
He said even though it’s emotionally draining to talk about what happened, their new purpose is to make sure everyone is aware of the dangers of sextortion.
“We have to make some change here, because Jordan’s story is kind of a unicorn,” DeMay said. “He’s almost 18 years old. He was close to being an adult, if not being an adult. He could have moved out that day and I would have been totally fine with him being on his own, because he was ready. That’s not the same thing for the 14-year-olds and the 10-year-olds and the 12-year-olds, and the 16-year-olds and the 15-year-olds -- they don’t stand a chance with this stuff right now that’s going on, especially if their parents don’t understand technology, don’t use it. They’re really at risk, so things have to change.”
Buta said she would like to see legislation that holds social media companies accountable for these types of scams on their platforms. She also wants more protection for children.
“We want to just create awareness out there for parents and teens,” Buta said. “If you think it can’t happen to you, I wouldn’t think that it would happen to my son, but it did. I can’t save him, but maybe we can save some other kids by sharing his story, and hopefully kids can relate to the person that Jordan was and know that if they do get into a situation, it’s OK to go to an adult, go to a parent, a teacher, someone they trust and ask for help.”
DeMay said this happened to his son, in part, because social media platforms gave predators a place to do it.
You can watch the full interview here: