April 16, 2024 • 19 mins
In a frightening trend, scammers are catfishing teen boys and trying to extort them — and there have been tragic outcomes. The FBI says this type of crime, which it calls “sextortion,” is one of the fastest growing crimes targeting children in the US.
Today, host David Gura talks to Bloomberg investigative reporter Olivia Carville about how teen boys are targeted online — and how these crimes impact the victims and their families.
This episode discusses sensitive topics, including suicide. If you or someone you know needs help with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, a global list of help lines is available here.
Read More: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media—and driving some to suicide
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we start today's show, I want to let you
know we're going to talk about suicide and some other
tough subjects. If you or someone you know needs help
with thoughts of suicide or self harm. A list of
helplines is available at Opencounseling dot.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Com, Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
On March twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, Jordan DeMay, a
high school senior in Marquette, Michigan, was getting ready to
leave the cold Upper Peninsula behind for spring break in Florida.
That night, he was at his girlfriend's house.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
They were kind of saying the goodbys. As I'm sure
you can imagine at that age, to be a part
was a really big deal.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's Olivia Carville. She's an investigative reporter at Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
So he was over at her house. He kissed her
good night. He drove home and started to peck for
his trip for Florida.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
The next day, when Jordan got back to his dad's house,
he had a message on Instagram from someone he didn't know,
a teenage girl.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Initially, she just wrote to her and said, hey, that.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Wasn't out of the ordinary. Jordan was a high school
football and basketball star, and he often heard from people
he didn't know.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
He was repeatedly in the local newspaper for his athletic successes,
so he was well known in that community and right
across the Upper Peninsula.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
The message he got that night was from someone with
the username Danny Roberts.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
He replied asking who she was. She said that she
was from Texas but now doing school in Georgia, and
they started chatting just about a regular kind of teenage things,
school life, and he was doing his laundry.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Danny and Jordan kept chatting, and a couple hours into
their conversation it took a turn. She told Jordan she
liked playing sexy games.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
She then sends him a naked photograph of herself and
asks for one in return, but she sets some conditions
on what she wants that photo to look like. She
wants it to have his face in it, and she
wants him to have a cute face or a cute expression.
Goes down to his bathroom and he takes a selfie
in the mirror, exposing himself, and he sends that back
(02:05):
to Danny.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And then everything changed.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
From via forward, the conversation spirals into what I can
only describe, as you know, one of the most dark,
sadistic message exchanges I've ever witnessed. Reading through the transcripts.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Today on the show What Happened to Jordan de May
Inside a horrific and fast growing form of cybercrime targeting teens.
I'm David Gerra, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News. The morning after Danny Roberts started that conversation
(02:44):
with Jordan on Instagram, Jordan's mom saw he texted her
during the night. Jordan was staying at his dad's house.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I woke up about six o'clock in the morning to
get ready for work and get my kids off to school,
and I saw a text message from that came in
the middle of the night that said mother, I love you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
That's Jordan's mom, Jennifer Buda.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I texted him back immediately said I love you too.
I hope you got a good night's sleep. I continued
to get ready, drove my children to daycare. It was
about seven o'clock, so I know that Jordan should be
up about that time, and he didn't respond to me.
And Jordan always responded to me, so I sent him
(03:31):
another text that said, are you okay, and as I
got home, I still had not received a text, and
something didn't feel right with me, so I sent him
a third text that just said Jordan.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I found out.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That Jordan was gone seven forty in the morning.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
She got the news from Jordan's dad, John DeMay, went
to check on Jordan that morning and found that he
died by suicide.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
The first twenty four to thirty six hours, you know
that it was challenging to try to process what even happened.
I mean, we were just so flabbergasted that we were,
you know, the giant question mark why, you know, we
just couldn't figure it out. And we were going through
all these scenarios and it was he, you know, breaking
up with his girlfriend of something going on, and what
(04:29):
happened is someone come at him. I mean, we just
had no idea.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
There were really no indications that Jordan had depression, that
he was suffering from unhappiness, that he struggled with mental health.
All those red flags that you might assume to see
in a suicide case just weren't here.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Reporter Olivia Carville says his death confused investigators. No.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I remember talking to the lead detective who actually went
on to really solve this case. When he walked into
Jordan's b the morning of his death, he understood the
what of the case. This is how he described it
to me, and by what I mean, what am I seeing?
I'm seeing this looks like a suicide case. But the why,
(05:13):
the why that happened wasn't clear. And he looked around
Jordan's bedroom and as a detective, you look for clothes,
and all he saw was a bag packed for Florida
with swimsuits and sunscreen. His cell phone. The alarm on
his cell phone kept going off, So why would he
have set his alarm if he didn't intend to go
(05:34):
to school the next day or didn't intend to wake
up the next day. Every indication was that Jordan was
planning to wake up the next morning. And I think
that was really confusing for the detective, and that gave
him pause or made him realize there might be more
to this than what's just on the surface.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Instagram transcripts helped law enforcement piece together what happened in
those early morning hours. Well, Jordan was chatting with someone
with the username Danny Roberts.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
As soon as that nude picture is sent, that flirtatious
teenage girl disappears, and what is left behind is someone
cruel who torments Jordan, who tells him that now that
he has this nude photo, they're going to ruin his life.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Olivia obtained excerpts of those transcripts and she read us
the next message Downy sent Jordan, I.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Have screenshot all your followers and tags and can send
this nudes to everyone and also send your nudes to
your family and friends until it goes viral. All you
have to do is cooperate with me and I won't
expose you.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
What Danny wanted was money.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Initially, the amount that they agreed to was three hundred dollars.
As soon as he sent that money, they came back
asking for more than they wanted, eight hundred dollars, and
Jordan actually sent a screenshot of his bank account showing
that he only had fifty five dollars in it, and
he said he was willing to send everything he had
to prevent them from sending that photo to his girlfriend,
(07:01):
and they replied saying no deal. And then there was
this back and forth around three am, and.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
At this point Jordan started to sound really terrified.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Jordan, why are you doing this to me, I am
begging for my own life Danny ten nine eight. I
bet your girlfriend will leave you for some other dude, Jordan,
I will be deared like I want to kill myself.
Danny Sure, I will watch you die a miserable death. Jordan.
(07:34):
It's over you winbro. I'm killing myself right now because
of you. Danny. Good, do that fast, or I'll make
you do it. I swear to God. I have no
idea what was going through his mind, but from reading
the messages that he was sending, it's clear that he
(07:56):
was losing hope and he didn't know where to go
from here, so he made the decision to delete that
entire message history with the Danny Roberts account. So around
three point thirty am, Jordan sends two text messages, one
to his mum, one to his girlfriend, and then he
kills himself.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
The entire conversation took less than six hours. So who
was Danny Roberts. That's after the break. Before the break,
we heard about a conversation on Instagram Jordan de May
(08:38):
had before he died by suicide. In less than six hours,
Jordan went from packing for his spring break trap to
taking his own life.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Everyone is just in shock, and the police start that investigation.
Jordan's body is removed from the house and no one
knows what's happened. His phone gets sent to the Computer
Crimes Unit for a forensic analysis, but it takes a
few days to get that response back, so law enforcement
are looking for clues in other areas.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And reporter Olivia Carville says, while that's happening, Jordan de
Maaye's friends and family, his teachers and classmates, and his
girlfriend Kyla trying to process what's happened. Kyla can't keep
up with all the messages she's getting on her phone.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
People are calling her, texting her. They don't believe that
Jordan's really dead. News of his death is spreading, and
she's getting contacted by strangers on social media, and she's
with a friend of hers, just trying to reckon with
what's happened. And she sees all of these messages coming
through in the steady stream, and she starts opening some
(09:43):
of them. And it was around three o'clock that afternoon
that she opened one from an Instagram music called Danny Roberts.
The message contained no words, had just had a photograph,
and that was the node photo that Jordan had seen
the previous night.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Kyla and Danny start to exchange messages. Here's Olivia reading
from that transcript.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Kyler, what is this about Danny? Do you know him? Kyler?
Do you? Danny? Answer me? Kyla? Who are you? Danny?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I beat?
Speaker 3 (10:18):
You know him? Kyler? That's my boyfriend. Why Denny? I
swear I will ruin his life with this? Kyler? He
killed himself last night. Please don't Danny. Do you want
me to ruin his life? Kyler? He's gone. No.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
It goes on like this. Then Danny tries to extort Kyla.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Denny, do you want me to end this and delete
the picks? Yes? Or no? Cooperate with me and this
will end. Just do as I say and all this
will end.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
For law enforcement, this exchange was a critical clue.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
They saw the nature of that blackmail and the back
and forth. The detective immediately thought this could be the why,
the why Jordan de May decided to end his life,
so he filed preservation requests to Meta to try and
pull data from the platform to show what was said
between Jordan Demay's account and the Danny Roberts account, and
(11:22):
as soon as he had that account and he saw
what was discussed between the two. He searched for the
IP address of that Danny Roberts account and it led
him directly to Lagos, Nigeria, and.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
What law enforcement discovered was two brothers in their early
twenties were posing as Danny Roberts. Court record show Samson
and Samuel Lagoshi had bought hacked Instagram accounts, including one
belonging to the real Danny Roberts. In their emails, there
was a word for word script of what was in
the messages sent to Jordan. Olivia says these kinds of
(11:54):
sample extortion scripts have been widely shared on the Internet
by a group called the Yahoo Boys, and that.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Comes from the email address that they use to try
and swindle Westerners. Back in the day, decades ago, there
was the Yahoo email scam or the Nigerian Princes. They
have evolved. This is the latest scam effort from this
loosely affiliated online gang and now instead of using traditional
(12:24):
romance scams or praying on the elderly, they are directly
targeting teenage boys across North America. These scammers are sharing information,
encouraging one another on what to say, how to say it,
how do I act like a teenage girl, how do
I make this believable, how do I turn the conversation flirtatious,
(12:45):
how do I get that naked photo? And how do
I blackmail effectively?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Olivia found videos on TikTok and YouTube in which people
are sharing these blackmail scripts and encouraging one another. You
can hear how matter of factly the scammers explain how
to extort people.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
In today's video, I'm going to explain about blackmailon opted.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
These are the pictures that you need to start the job.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Both companies said in written statements that they'd remove posts
related to this scam that had been brought to their
attention and vowed to continue to take down such content,
but we found similar content still exists on both TikTok
and YouTube. Olivia read a report by Paul Raphile. He's
an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute who's documented
hundreds of thousands of posts on social media like these.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
He found a post of exactly what was sent to
Jordan to May, down to the typos, and they had
more than half a million views.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I was completely surprised.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Jordan's mom Jen, butda you know the FBI.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Had put out a press release the day before this
happened to Jordan, warning parents, and you know that was
all brand new information to me.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
The FBI has said they're aware of more than twelve
thousand victims across North America right now. They're putting out
PSAs to try and stop it, which is what they think,
you know, the only thing we can really do to
try and prevent or curb this crime.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
But Jordan's parents do think there's something else that could
prevent this from happening to other families. They want social
media platforms to take action. Jordan's parents have filed a
lawsuit against Meta, Instagram's parent company.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
They're literally allowing criminals to thrive on them, and they're
not doing enough to prevent it. They've been to congressional
hearings time and time again as the same song and dance,
and they're protected by a federal law in section two
thirty that basically gives them carte blanche liability that says,
(14:42):
no matter what happens on our platforms, we're not held
liable no matter what we do. So sorry that crime
is happening, but it's not our problem.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
In a statement, Meta's global head of safety said sextortion
is a horrific crime and the company has spent years
building technology to combat and to support law enforcement in
investigating and prosecuting the criminals behind it. And Olivia says
the platforms have been taking action.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
They have been doing things like sending sextortion focused warnings
to users of their products. They have been using artificial
intelligence to try and detect suspicious accounts. They have been
just recently, Meta announced it was going to use AI
to blur nudity in photos that are sent between accounts
(15:30):
and doing what they can from a trust and safety
standpoint to try and proactively stop this crime. But you know,
the bad act is a savvy and as soon as
a guardrail is put up, they come up with ways
to evade it, get over it, get under it, and
the crime keeps changing as the social media networks create
(15:50):
ways to prevent it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Meta says it tracks new trends so it can quote
regularly improve its tools and systems. The case, filed by
John DeMay and Jen Butda, is part of a group
lawsuit alleging social media companies have harmed children by designing
addictive products. Meta said the company can't respond to questions
about pending litigation. There's also a criminal case involving the
(16:16):
two brothers who targeted Jordan. To May, they were extradited
from Nigeria to the US, and last week they pleaded
guilty to conspiring to sexually exploit teenagers online. I talked
to Jordan's parents after those guilty please. They'd driven from
Marquette to watch the court proceedings in person.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
The emotional part was just, you know, wrapping her mind
around that these two guys that I'm looking at in
the courtroom, you know, were the ones that were torturing
my son that night, and we're finally getting some emission
from them out of their own mouse.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I was hoping that someone would be held accountable for
what happened to Jordan, and yesterday with those guilty please,
someone is held accountable, and that is justice for Jordan,
justice for community. It will never bring my son back.
It does not change my life. It does not change
(17:11):
the pain I feel how much I miss my son
every single day. And overall, it's an extremely unfortunate situation
that involves not just our family, but the family of
these two individuals as well, and it's not good what
(17:34):
happened for anybody, and as a mom, I struggle with
feeling bad for their mom that she probably is really
missing them and she's an innocent bystander, just like I.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Am Jordan's mom. Jen says she hopes the outcome will
send a message to extortionists.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That you can be found, you can be brought here
and held accountable, and that are US Department of Justice
is willing to do that in order to keep our
kids safe.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
But Jen Buda has a message of her own for
other families.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
I want parents to sit down and have a very
open conversation with their children about who they talk to
on social media and if something doesn't seem right, it
doesn't feel right. If someone's asking you for money or
favors or pictures, you should question that. There needs to
be an ongoing conversation with kids, also letting them know
(18:31):
that if they are targeted by someone, it's going to
be okay, and to go for an adult, a trusted adult,
for help. Law enforcement does want to help you.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
You are the victim.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
You are not doing anything wrong and this is just
a small blip in your life that even if you
did send a photo, your life will go on and
nobody will recall that this happened.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
If you or someone you know, it's help with thoughts
of suicide or self harm. A list of helplines is
available at opencoonseling dot com. This is The Big Take
from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera. This episode was produced
by David Fox. It was edited by Caitlin Kenny and
(19:20):
Robert Friedman. It was mixed by Rishiba Jakol. It was
fact checked by Thomas lu Our senior producer is Naomi Shavin.
Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beamster bor is
Our executive producer. Sage Bauman is our head of podcasts.
Thanks for listening. Please follow and review The Big Take
wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps new listeners find
(19:42):
the show. We'll be back tomorrow
Before we start today's show, I want to let you
know we're going to talk about suicide and some other
tough subjects. If you or someone you know needs help
with thoughts of suicide or self harm. A list of
helplines is available at Opencounseling dot.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Com, Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
On March twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, Jordan DeMay, a
high school senior in Marquette, Michigan, was getting ready to
leave the cold Upper Peninsula behind for spring break in Florida.
That night, he was at his girlfriend's house.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
They were kind of saying the goodbys. As I'm sure
you can imagine at that age, to be a part
was a really big deal.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's Olivia Carville. She's an investigative reporter at Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
So he was over at her house. He kissed her
good night. He drove home and started to peck for
his trip for Florida.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
The next day, when Jordan got back to his dad's house,
he had a message on Instagram from someone he didn't know,
a teenage girl.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Initially, she just wrote to her and said, hey, that.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Wasn't out of the ordinary. Jordan was a high school
football and basketball star, and he often heard from people
he didn't know.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
He was repeatedly in the local newspaper for his athletic successes,
so he was well known in that community and right
across the Upper Peninsula.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
The message he got that night was from someone with
the username Danny Roberts.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
He replied asking who she was. She said that she
was from Texas but now doing school in Georgia, and
they started chatting just about a regular kind of teenage things,
school life, and he was doing his laundry.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Danny and Jordan kept chatting, and a couple hours into
their conversation it took a turn. She told Jordan she
liked playing sexy games.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
She then sends him a naked photograph of herself and
asks for one in return, but she sets some conditions
on what she wants that photo to look like. She
wants it to have his face in it, and she
wants him to have a cute face or a cute expression.
Goes down to his bathroom and he takes a selfie
in the mirror, exposing himself, and he sends that back
(02:05):
to Danny.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
And then everything changed.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
From via forward, the conversation spirals into what I can
only describe, as you know, one of the most dark,
sadistic message exchanges I've ever witnessed. Reading through the transcripts.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Today on the show What Happened to Jordan de May
Inside a horrific and fast growing form of cybercrime targeting teens.
I'm David Gerra, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News. The morning after Danny Roberts started that conversation
(02:44):
with Jordan on Instagram, Jordan's mom saw he texted her
during the night. Jordan was staying at his dad's house.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I woke up about six o'clock in the morning to
get ready for work and get my kids off to school,
and I saw a text message from that came in
the middle of the night that said mother, I love you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
That's Jordan's mom, Jennifer Buda.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I texted him back immediately said I love you too.
I hope you got a good night's sleep. I continued
to get ready, drove my children to daycare. It was
about seven o'clock, so I know that Jordan should be
up about that time, and he didn't respond to me.
And Jordan always responded to me, so I sent him
(03:31):
another text that said, are you okay, and as I
got home, I still had not received a text, and
something didn't feel right with me, so I sent him
a third text that just said Jordan.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I found out.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That Jordan was gone seven forty in the morning.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
She got the news from Jordan's dad, John DeMay, went
to check on Jordan that morning and found that he
died by suicide.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
The first twenty four to thirty six hours, you know
that it was challenging to try to process what even happened.
I mean, we were just so flabbergasted that we were,
you know, the giant question mark why, you know, we
just couldn't figure it out. And we were going through
all these scenarios and it was he, you know, breaking
up with his girlfriend of something going on, and what
(04:29):
happened is someone come at him. I mean, we just
had no idea.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
There were really no indications that Jordan had depression, that
he was suffering from unhappiness, that he struggled with mental health.
All those red flags that you might assume to see
in a suicide case just weren't here.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Reporter Olivia Carville says his death confused investigators. No.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I remember talking to the lead detective who actually went
on to really solve this case. When he walked into
Jordan's b the morning of his death, he understood the
what of the case. This is how he described it
to me, and by what I mean, what am I seeing?
I'm seeing this looks like a suicide case. But the why,
(05:13):
the why that happened wasn't clear. And he looked around
Jordan's bedroom and as a detective, you look for clothes,
and all he saw was a bag packed for Florida
with swimsuits and sunscreen. His cell phone. The alarm on
his cell phone kept going off, So why would he
have set his alarm if he didn't intend to go
(05:34):
to school the next day or didn't intend to wake
up the next day. Every indication was that Jordan was
planning to wake up the next morning. And I think
that was really confusing for the detective, and that gave
him pause or made him realize there might be more
to this than what's just on the surface.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Instagram transcripts helped law enforcement piece together what happened in
those early morning hours. Well, Jordan was chatting with someone
with the username Danny Roberts.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
As soon as that nude picture is sent, that flirtatious
teenage girl disappears, and what is left behind is someone
cruel who torments Jordan, who tells him that now that
he has this nude photo, they're going to ruin his life.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Olivia obtained excerpts of those transcripts and she read us
the next message Downy sent Jordan, I.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Have screenshot all your followers and tags and can send
this nudes to everyone and also send your nudes to
your family and friends until it goes viral. All you
have to do is cooperate with me and I won't
expose you.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
What Danny wanted was money.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Initially, the amount that they agreed to was three hundred dollars.
As soon as he sent that money, they came back
asking for more than they wanted, eight hundred dollars, and
Jordan actually sent a screenshot of his bank account showing
that he only had fifty five dollars in it, and
he said he was willing to send everything he had
to prevent them from sending that photo to his girlfriend,
(07:01):
and they replied saying no deal. And then there was
this back and forth around three am, and.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
At this point Jordan started to sound really terrified.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Jordan, why are you doing this to me, I am
begging for my own life Danny ten nine eight. I
bet your girlfriend will leave you for some other dude, Jordan,
I will be deared like I want to kill myself.
Danny Sure, I will watch you die a miserable death. Jordan.
(07:34):
It's over you winbro. I'm killing myself right now because
of you. Danny. Good, do that fast, or I'll make
you do it. I swear to God. I have no
idea what was going through his mind, but from reading
the messages that he was sending, it's clear that he
(07:56):
was losing hope and he didn't know where to go
from here, so he made the decision to delete that
entire message history with the Danny Roberts account. So around
three point thirty am, Jordan sends two text messages, one
to his mum, one to his girlfriend, and then he
kills himself.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
The entire conversation took less than six hours. So who
was Danny Roberts. That's after the break. Before the break,
we heard about a conversation on Instagram Jordan de May
(08:38):
had before he died by suicide. In less than six hours,
Jordan went from packing for his spring break trap to
taking his own life.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Everyone is just in shock, and the police start that investigation.
Jordan's body is removed from the house and no one
knows what's happened. His phone gets sent to the Computer
Crimes Unit for a forensic analysis, but it takes a
few days to get that response back, so law enforcement
are looking for clues in other areas.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And reporter Olivia Carville says, while that's happening, Jordan de
Maaye's friends and family, his teachers and classmates, and his
girlfriend Kyla trying to process what's happened. Kyla can't keep
up with all the messages she's getting on her phone.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
People are calling her, texting her. They don't believe that
Jordan's really dead. News of his death is spreading, and
she's getting contacted by strangers on social media, and she's
with a friend of hers, just trying to reckon with
what's happened. And she sees all of these messages coming
through in the steady stream, and she starts opening some
(09:43):
of them. And it was around three o'clock that afternoon
that she opened one from an Instagram music called Danny Roberts.
The message contained no words, had just had a photograph,
and that was the node photo that Jordan had seen
the previous night.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Kyla and Danny start to exchange messages. Here's Olivia reading
from that transcript.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Kyler, what is this about Danny? Do you know him? Kyler?
Do you? Danny? Answer me? Kyla? Who are you? Danny?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I beat?
Speaker 3 (10:18):
You know him? Kyler? That's my boyfriend. Why Denny? I
swear I will ruin his life with this? Kyler? He
killed himself last night. Please don't Danny. Do you want
me to ruin his life? Kyler? He's gone. No.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
It goes on like this. Then Danny tries to extort Kyla.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Denny, do you want me to end this and delete
the picks? Yes? Or no? Cooperate with me and this
will end. Just do as I say and all this
will end.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
For law enforcement, this exchange was a critical clue.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
They saw the nature of that blackmail and the back
and forth. The detective immediately thought this could be the why,
the why Jordan de May decided to end his life,
so he filed preservation requests to Meta to try and
pull data from the platform to show what was said
between Jordan Demay's account and the Danny Roberts account, and
(11:22):
as soon as he had that account and he saw
what was discussed between the two. He searched for the
IP address of that Danny Roberts account and it led
him directly to Lagos, Nigeria, and.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
What law enforcement discovered was two brothers in their early
twenties were posing as Danny Roberts. Court record show Samson
and Samuel Lagoshi had bought hacked Instagram accounts, including one
belonging to the real Danny Roberts. In their emails, there
was a word for word script of what was in
the messages sent to Jordan. Olivia says these kinds of
(11:54):
sample extortion scripts have been widely shared on the Internet
by a group called the Yahoo Boys, and that.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Comes from the email address that they use to try
and swindle Westerners. Back in the day, decades ago, there
was the Yahoo email scam or the Nigerian Princes. They
have evolved. This is the latest scam effort from this
loosely affiliated online gang and now instead of using traditional
(12:24):
romance scams or praying on the elderly, they are directly
targeting teenage boys across North America. These scammers are sharing information,
encouraging one another on what to say, how to say it,
how do I act like a teenage girl, how do
I make this believable, how do I turn the conversation flirtatious,
(12:45):
how do I get that naked photo? And how do
I blackmail effectively?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Olivia found videos on TikTok and YouTube in which people
are sharing these blackmail scripts and encouraging one another. You
can hear how matter of factly the scammers explain how
to extort people.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
In today's video, I'm going to explain about blackmailon opted.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
These are the pictures that you need to start the job.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Both companies said in written statements that they'd remove posts
related to this scam that had been brought to their
attention and vowed to continue to take down such content,
but we found similar content still exists on both TikTok
and YouTube. Olivia read a report by Paul Raphile. He's
an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute who's documented
hundreds of thousands of posts on social media like these.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
He found a post of exactly what was sent to
Jordan to May, down to the typos, and they had
more than half a million views.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I was completely surprised.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Jordan's mom Jen, butda you know the FBI.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Had put out a press release the day before this
happened to Jordan, warning parents, and you know that was
all brand new information to me.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
The FBI has said they're aware of more than twelve
thousand victims across North America right now. They're putting out
PSAs to try and stop it, which is what they think,
you know, the only thing we can really do to
try and prevent or curb this crime.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
But Jordan's parents do think there's something else that could
prevent this from happening to other families. They want social
media platforms to take action. Jordan's parents have filed a
lawsuit against Meta, Instagram's parent company.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
They're literally allowing criminals to thrive on them, and they're
not doing enough to prevent it. They've been to congressional
hearings time and time again as the same song and dance,
and they're protected by a federal law in section two
thirty that basically gives them carte blanche liability that says,
(14:42):
no matter what happens on our platforms, we're not held
liable no matter what we do. So sorry that crime
is happening, but it's not our problem.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
In a statement, Meta's global head of safety said sextortion
is a horrific crime and the company has spent years
building technology to combat and to support law enforcement in
investigating and prosecuting the criminals behind it. And Olivia says
the platforms have been taking action.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
They have been doing things like sending sextortion focused warnings
to users of their products. They have been using artificial
intelligence to try and detect suspicious accounts. They have been
just recently, Meta announced it was going to use AI
to blur nudity in photos that are sent between accounts
(15:30):
and doing what they can from a trust and safety
standpoint to try and proactively stop this crime. But you know,
the bad act is a savvy and as soon as
a guardrail is put up, they come up with ways
to evade it, get over it, get under it, and
the crime keeps changing as the social media networks create
(15:50):
ways to prevent it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Meta says it tracks new trends so it can quote
regularly improve its tools and systems. The case, filed by
John DeMay and Jen Butda, is part of a group
lawsuit alleging social media companies have harmed children by designing
addictive products. Meta said the company can't respond to questions
about pending litigation. There's also a criminal case involving the
(16:16):
two brothers who targeted Jordan. To May, they were extradited
from Nigeria to the US, and last week they pleaded
guilty to conspiring to sexually exploit teenagers online. I talked
to Jordan's parents after those guilty please. They'd driven from
Marquette to watch the court proceedings in person.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
The emotional part was just, you know, wrapping her mind
around that these two guys that I'm looking at in
the courtroom, you know, were the ones that were torturing
my son that night, and we're finally getting some emission
from them out of their own mouse.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I was hoping that someone would be held accountable for
what happened to Jordan, and yesterday with those guilty please,
someone is held accountable, and that is justice for Jordan,
justice for community. It will never bring my son back.
It does not change my life. It does not change
(17:11):
the pain I feel how much I miss my son
every single day. And overall, it's an extremely unfortunate situation
that involves not just our family, but the family of
these two individuals as well, and it's not good what
(17:34):
happened for anybody, and as a mom, I struggle with
feeling bad for their mom that she probably is really
missing them and she's an innocent bystander, just like I.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Am Jordan's mom. Jen says she hopes the outcome will
send a message to extortionists.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That you can be found, you can be brought here
and held accountable, and that are US Department of Justice
is willing to do that in order to keep our
kids safe.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
But Jen Buda has a message of her own for
other families.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
I want parents to sit down and have a very
open conversation with their children about who they talk to
on social media and if something doesn't seem right, it
doesn't feel right. If someone's asking you for money or
favors or pictures, you should question that. There needs to
be an ongoing conversation with kids, also letting them know
(18:31):
that if they are targeted by someone, it's going to
be okay, and to go for an adult, a trusted adult,
for help. Law enforcement does want to help you.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
You are the victim.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
You are not doing anything wrong and this is just
a small blip in your life that even if you
did send a photo, your life will go on and
nobody will recall that this happened.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
If you or someone you know, it's help with thoughts
of suicide or self harm. A list of helplines is
available at opencoonseling dot com. This is The Big Take
from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera. This episode was produced
by David Fox. It was edited by Caitlin Kenny and
(19:20):
Robert Friedman. It was mixed by Rishiba Jakol. It was
fact checked by Thomas lu Our senior producer is Naomi Shavin.
Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beamster bor is
Our executive producer. Sage Bauman is our head of podcasts.
Thanks for listening. Please follow and review The Big Take
wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps new listeners find
(19:42):
the show. We'll be back tomorrow
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