Grieving father whose son, 17, committed suicide after falling prey to ‘sextortion’ scam, warns parents

A distraught father has spoken out about the dangers of ‘sextortion’ scams targeting impressionable teens after his 16-year-old son committed suicide.

Brian Montgomery, from Starkville, MS, told how his son Walker committed suicide on December 1, 2022, after Nigerian hackers posing as an attractive young girl on social media persuaded him to send nude videos and then threatened to release them publicly unless he she paid out.

He compared the horrific incident to his son being the target of a serial killer, he told a local news outlet Clarion ledger that just a day before his death, Walker had been hunting, eating with his family, and perfectly happy.

Then, on the night of November 30, he was contacted by the hackers’ fake profile, and hours later, the Montgomery family woke up to find Walker dead.

“The pressure Walker was under was so unbearable that he tells it [the hackers] “I’m going to kill myself”…they respond with “go ahead, you’re already dead,” said Brian Fox news.

“I want people to understand the evil that is in the world and that is after our children.”

Walker, a high school football star in Starkville, received a direct message via Instagram around midnight on Nov. 30.

After a back-and-forth conversation, the hackers, posing as a teenager, told Walker that they wanted to participate in a sexual encounter and asked the boy to send explicit images and videos of themselves.

Once the hackers received the content, they called it quits and threatened to send all his family and friends his explicit clips unless he coughed up $1,000 — an amount the 16-year-old couldn’t afford.

The call ended around 2 a.m. after Walker begged the hackers for over an hour not to release the video before finally telling them he was going to kill himself.

After accessing the phone and investigating the content of the conversation that led to Walker’s death, the FBI traced the hackers’ IP address to a location in Nigeria.

“Sexuality begins when an adult contacts a minor through an online platform used to meet and communicate, such as a game, app, or social media account,” the FBI said.

In a scheme that has become more common in recent times, the predator (who poses as a young girl) uses deceit and manipulation to convince a young man, usually between the ages of 14 and 17, to get involved with explicit activities via video, which is then secretly recorded. by the predator.’

“The predator then reveals they made the recordings and attempts to extort money from the victim to avoid posting them online.”

Brian used his platform to warn other parents to monitor their child’s social media use, accusing tech companies of not putting proper controls in place to avoid exposing young users to such scams.

“Don’t just let your kids use these phones unsupervised because they won’t be able to understand the dangers on the other side of it,” he said.

“As a parent, I’ll have to live with that sadly, because clearly Walker only had access to his phone in his room.”

“There’s a lot of criminal activity coming from social media and our tech companies have the ability to filter and censor some of this, especially for minors, and they’re not as aggressively investing in these technologies as they are in something they can sell.”

The story of Walker’s death comes after three Nigerian men were charged with their involvement in a very similar sextortion plot that led to 17-year-old star athlete Jordan DeMay committing suicide last year.

According to federal prosecutors the scammers posed as a teenage girl on Instagram and convinced DeMay to send them sexually suggestive photos.

They then gathered information about him and promised to release the photos to his friends and family unless he paid them $1,000.

Hours after the threat was made, DeMay, a student at Marquette Senior High School in Michigan, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Samuel Ogoshi, 22, Samson Ogoshi, 20, and Ezekiel Ejehem Robert, 19, all from Lagos, Nigeria, were charged in May in connection with DeMay’s death. The tragedy sparked a major investigation involving Michigan authorities and the FBI.

“All you have to do is cooperate with me and I will not expose you,” Ogoshi wrote to DeMay, the FBI say. Despite paying over $300, the threats continued.

‘I’m kms rn [kill myself right now]. Yours,” DeMay replied in one of the messages.

‘Good. Do that quickly. Or I will force you to do it. I swear to God,” was the reply.

For his alleged direct role in contacting DeMay, Ogoshi faces charges of sexual exploitation and attempted sexual exploitation of a minor resulting in death.

If found guilty, he could face life in prison.

All three are charged with conspiracy to sexually exploit minors, conspiracy to distribute child pornography and conspiracy to commit Internet stalking.

These offenses carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years.

In a statement after the charges were announced, DeMay’s mother, Jennifer Buta, said, “As parents, we cannot imagine what Jordan went through that night and how scared he was because of this senseless act.”

U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, Mark Totten, said more than 100 young men across the country had been targeted by the Nigerian gang.

Totten said the three men are being extradited from Nigeria with the cooperation of local authorities. The investigation is continuing, the prosecutor said.