Two men flown to the US over a sextortion scheme that ended in two teenagers' deaths

Two men landed in the United States on 27 August, three years after being arrested in Nigeria. Adebola Festus Adekunle, 26, and Mudasiru Afeez Olawale, 24, were picked up in August 2023 during Operation Artemis, an international push against extortion rings run from the country. Among the charges each now faces is the sexual exploitation of a minor resulting in death. Two American teenagers, one in Mississippi and one in North Carolina, are dead. Both men are presumed innocent until a court says otherwise, and the count carrying a mandatory minimum of 30 years is the one tied to those deaths.

Financially motivated sextortion follows a grimly consistent script, and the FBI says teenage boys aged roughly 13 to 17 are who it aims at. A stranger on a social app strikes up a fast, flattering conversation. An image gets sent. The tone changes within seconds: pay up, or this goes to your school, your friends list, your parents. The money is asked for in gift cards, crypto or through money-transfer services, and the demands do not stop once they are met.

That last point is the one to say out loud to a teenager, before anything happens rather than after. Paying does not close it down, it marks you as someone who pays. Stop replying, keep the messages, tell an adult. The shame the whole thing runs on evaporates the moment one other person knows about it.

There is no software fix here, because this is a conversation rather than a virus, and anything claiming to block it is selling you something. The practical job on a shared family PC is duller: knowing which accounts are signed into it and what they can reach. Tendvane's Privacy and accounts check lays that out in one pass.