Marquette County Sheriff Greg Zyburt poses with television journalist Chris Hansen. Hansen was in the area last week to interview Zyburt about the Jordan DeMay case. Demay was a victim of sextortion who died by suicide. (Photo courtesy of Greg Zyburt)

By CHRISTIE MASTRIC

Journal Staff Writer

MARQUETTE — A case that saddened the Marquette community will be part of an upcoming documentary series on the streaming service TruBlu.

Leading the effort is Chris Hansen, known for his work on “Dateline NBC,” particularly the “To Catch a Predator” segment that ran in the mid-2000s. It involved catching potential internet predators using a sting operation.

Hansen continues his mission of stopping would-be sex criminals on “Takedown with Chris Hansen” on TruBlu. The new documentary series involves cases of “sextortion,” one being the local case of Jordan DeMay, a Marquette High School student.

On March 25, 2022, 17-year-old DeMay was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His death prompted an investigation by the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, which culminated in the May federal indictment of three Nigerian men with sexually extorting numerous men and teenage boys across the U.S., charging one of them with causing DeMay’s death.

It is alleged that the men sexually exploited minors by causing the minors to produce pornographic images that the defendants then used for blackmail. It also is alleged that once the defendants received sexually explicit images, they created collages that included the images alongside other images of the victims from social media, including images of the victims’ school, family and friends. The men then threatened to disclose the collages via social media unless the victims paid money.

The extradition process continues, Hansen told The Mining Journal.

Hansen said a a crew was in Marquette last week to speak with Marquette County Sheriff Greg Zyburt about the DeMay case, who after the incident noted that In DeMay’s case, it took only six hours for it to unfold from beginning to end. Hansen also talked with DeMay’s mother and father.

“We’re doing a larger story on sextortion, so we’ve interviewed parents of four different victims, and we’ve talked to investigators involved in all those cases,” Hansen said.

The goal is to shed light on the issue, he said.

“It’s almost an epidemic,” Hansen said.

The DeMay story was significant, he noted, because of the indictments in Nigeria — an difficult task. He called it a good example of local law enforcement collaborating with the FBI and federal prosecutors to arrest the three men and potentially extradite them to the U.S., “which would be the first case that I’m aware of where that’s happened in a sextortion case.”

Often, just “money mules” working in the U.S. will be arrested, Hansen said.

“I’ve been covering Nigerian crime schemes for a numbers of years, and it’s very difficult to track these guys down because they’re half a world away and they’re protected by anonymity and the internet and everything else,” Hansen said. “It’s not an easy case, and so this is kind of a standout in the larger documentary series that we’re doing for my new streaming crime network, TruBlu.”

Hansen said that after the series is finished, an hour-long version will be produced as a teaching tool for schools across the U.S.

Hansen said Zyburt talked about the call coming from DeMay’s dad and a detective assessing the crime scene.

Questions arose.

“Why does this happen? What’s the cause behind it?” Hansen said. “A good student who’s an athlete and headed off to college who texts his mom at 3:41 a.m. and says, ‘I love you, Mom,’ and then she loses contact.”

The interaction between DeMay and the scam artists involved in the sextortion plot, he noted, lasted only a few hours.

“Kids that age often don’t see their way through it,” Hansen said. “He obviously, or apparently, felt that he couldn’t get past it.”

Social media crucial

The fact they are so tied into their social media presence, Hansen stressed, is a factor.

“Sadly, we see these kids take their own lives, and it’s horrifically tragic because had he just rode it out for another day or had he gone to his dad or mom, they would have said, ‘All right, we’ll get through this together,'” Hansen said.

What’s particularly tragic, he said, is that even though the case involved a “great kid and great parents” — sextortion still happens, which speaks to the “treacherous nature of the crime” and how adept the criminals are in convincing kids their lives are over.

“It’s the impetuous nature of an adolescent’s brain,” Hansen said. “It’s just not fully developed. Any kid is susceptible to this, and especially given how intense the connection is between kids and a social media profile. It’s everything.”

Kids also don’t have a lot of money to send the predators, who move on to the next victim, Hansen said. in the DeMay case, a female friend of the teen received texts from the scammer, which she turned over to the police.

“When the detectives saw those texts, they put two and two together,” Hansen said.

They realized it was a sextortion case.

He also said DeMay’s parents made a courageous decision to put themselves in the public eye and send the message to other kids to talk with their parents about a situation.

“This kid should have just completed his first year of college,” Hansen said. “He should be continuing his education in physical therapy. But now he’s gone. It’s tragic on every single level.”

Each victim profiled in the series is the same way, he said. The cases come from South Carolina, Ohio and San Jose, California.

“The bad kids don’t care,” Hansen said. “I don’t mean to be flippant about it, but it’s the good kids who worry about their image and their reputation in the community.”

Zyburt said it’s important to get a message out to kids.

“If this happens to you, there will be embarassment and repercussions, but it’s not worth taking your life,” Zyburt said. “Contact authorities to help get the people who do this.

Zyburt also has a message for the perpatrators of this type of crime.

“If you are doing this, we will get you,” he said.

Hansen said he hopes to finish the series in the next four to six weeks, with the main interviews already completed.

He does not have an official title for the series yet, but called it a “passion project” for the documentary makers.

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 550. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.