Teenager's Suicide Death Leads to 4 Arrests in Alleged Sextortion Case

The suicide death of a 17-year-old male three years ago has resulted in the arrest of four individuals as part of an alleged sextortion case.

The men who were taken into custody were in West Africa, and are said to be part of an international financial sextortion scheme that targeted thousands of minors worldwide. On Friday, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of the individuals.

Teenager Commits Suicide Amid Sextortion Case

They were identified as Alfred Kassi, Oumarou Ouedraogo, Moussa Diaby, and Oumar Cisse. The four men were said to be all from Cote d'Ivoire and were arrested by Ivorian law enforcement last month.

Cote d'Ivoire has laws against extraditing its citizens, which means the suspects in the sextortion case will face cybercrime charges in their own country. The arrest of the four men comes after the late teen, Ryan Last, died by suicide in February 2022 after being deceived online by who he thought was a 20-year-old woman, according to the Independent.

The individual allegedly threatened Last that they would post intimate photos of him unless he paid them $5,000. When the victim said that he was not able to afford the payment, the suspect later reduced it to only $150.

When Last paid the demanded $150, the suspect told him that he needed to make more payments if he didn't want his photos leaked. When the teenager died, his mother, Pauline Stuart, said that her son's suicide note expressed regret for not realizing that he was being deceived.

Four Arrests Made

The person that Last was talking to online, who he thought was a woman, turned out to be Kassi, who still had the teenager's explicit photos when he was arrested. Stuart said that the suspects catfished her son and gained his trust by flirting and showing him interest, People reported.

The mother added that the teenager was terrified of what would happen to his reputation and what his friends and family would think about him. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is still working on the case with the help of the San Jose Police Department, the U.S. Embassy in Abidjan, Meta, and the government of Cote d'Ivoire.

There was also a similar case where two brothers from Nigeria were sentenced in 2024 to 17 and a half years in federal prison. This was after they pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teenage boys and young men across the United States, including a 17-year-old Michigan resident, who took his own life, as per the Associated Press.