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A man in a South Carolina prison who posed as a teenage girl on a dating site in order to extort a victim in Michigan was found guilty by a federal jury in Kalamazoo Friday.
The man, Glenn Daeward Boyd, 36, of Kershaw, South Carolina, had been in prison for unrelated convictions in August of 2023 when he began posing as an 18-year-old girl from Grand Rapids, Michigan named “Jad” on the “Plenty of Fish” dating platform, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan.
After two days of corresponding with a 22-year-old in Michigan, Boyd told the victim he was actually a 15-year-old girl and began to threaten to call the police and the victim’s family to tell them they were a pedophile if the victim did not send them money.
Boyd used a Facebook profile to post on an account related to the victim: “He is a pedophile I have all the evidence if anyone wants to see it.”
That same day, the victim killed themself.
Andrew Birge, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, said in the release announcing the federal jury’s decision that in cases where perpetrators exploit victims by threatening to reveal sexual information about them, known as “sextortion”, tragedy often results.
“Perpetrators like Mr. Boyd who attempt to extort people online using sexual exploitation will be held accountable, and cannot hide behind their cell phones and computers,” Birge said.
When sentenced, Boyd faces up to 20 years in prison for attempted extortion, 5 years in prison for stalking and 20 years in prison for each of the five counts of wire fraud he was convicted on.
Sextortion is an emerging form of exploitation and one that can impact individuals of all ages, though the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned the public, children and younger people are particularly being victimized.
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Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray implored Senators in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee at the end of 2023 to increase awareness for sextortion which he testified has been “bursting into prominence” in recent years.
And when kids are the targets, they feel like they don’t have a choice, Wray said. When an extortionist says they will distribute sexual materials or information about a kid, they often feel they can’t turn to parents or other adults out of shame.
“They feel like they’re trapped and stuck and then turn to tragic consequences like suicide,” Wray said. “So raising awareness is not just raising awareness for parents, but it’s raising awareness for teenagers so that they know there’s something they can do.”
The FBI, alongside Homeland Security Investigations, received more than 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors, primarily of boys, between October 2021 and March 2023, with at least 20 suicides occuring as a result of the sextortion.
But one Michigan family, though their story is tragic, stands as a testament of fighting this violence moving forward, Wray said.
In 2022, Jordan DeMay, 17, of Marquette was tricked by two men posing as a young woman into sending explicit photos of himself. The two men then attempted to extort DeMay for money and when he couldn’t pay, they encouraged him to kill himself. He did, within six hours of the extortionists contacting him.
Wray praised DeMay’s parents for being vocal advocates in Michigan for awareness for sextortion, taking the death of their son and working to ensure no other family endures the same loss.
Last year, DeMay’s family led the charge to create laws that would place specified criminal penalties on sextortion. Those laws now go into effect April 2.
Sextortion is such an effective crime because victims and parents are too embarrassed or afraid to talk about it, Jordan DeMay’s father, John DeMay told Michigan Advance as the legislation was making its way through floor votes in the state legislature.
“The law enforcement community is calling this an epidemic, and it really is, because the detective bureaus are getting bombarded with this stuff. It’s just every day on their desk, and there’s a lot of it that goes unreported and it goes unreported because a lot of these kids are and adults are embarrassed by it,” DeMay said. “But we’re trying to peel that back and say, ‘Hey, listen, this isn’t your fault’… The big picture is, we’re trying to inform young people and parents specifically, this stuff has happened. It’s real. Pay attention to it. This is what you need to look for and most importantly, if it happens to you, this is what you need to do’.”
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