Walker Montgomery died by suicide in 2022 after a sextortionist on Instagram threatened to release a sexual video of the 16-year-old boy unless he gave the scammer $1,000. Now, Adebola Festus Adekunle has been extradited to the United States and a federal judge has arraigned him for the alleged criminal acts that led to the teenager’s death.
Adekunle, a 26-year-old Lagos, Nigeria, resident, made his first appearance in court on Friday in front of Magistrate Judge Jane M. Virden of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. Federal agents have indicted him on three charges for the sexual exploitation of a minor resulting in death, production of child sexual abuse material, coercion and enticement of a minor and interstate threats with intent to extort.
If the court finds him guilty, Adekunle could face up to life in prison with mandatory minimum prison sentences for two of the charges. His charge for child exploitation resulting in death carries a mandatory 30-prison sentence if he is found guilty.
“This tragedy was immediately investigated by the Mississippi Attorney General, the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, the Starkville Police Department and the FBI. The evidence led agents to Nigeria,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi Scott Leary said in a Friday U.S. Department of Justice press release. “Undeterred, the FBI worked with DOJ’s Office of International Affairs for years, and eventually the defendant was extradited from Nigeria to face justice in the United States. We are thankful for the hard work of Nigeria’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Working together, state, federal and international agencies brought us here today.”
The DOJ says Adekunle’s extradition and arraignment is a result of Operation Artemis, in which the FBI is cracking down on financially motivated sextortion rings operating in Nigeria and directly linked the schemes to dozens of suicide deaths of American teenagers.
“Sextortion is a serious crime with devastating consequences,” Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Jackson Field Office Robert Eikhoff said in a press release. “Its impact on victims and their families is profound and long‑lasting. The extradition of Adekunle sends a clear and unmistakable message: crossing state lines does not erase criminal charges, and international borders do not shield individuals from accountability.”
In a press release from her office, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch mourned the loss of Montgomery while hoping that he gains justice through Adekunle’s trial.
“Walker Montgomery should be here with us today. He should be moving into his dormitory, meeting up with friends, and running to class. That he is not is a tragedy,” she said on Friday. “And it is because of the criminal acts of someone halfway around the world – someone who has been brought to the United States now to stand trial for his actions. This trial cannot bring back Walker and the Montgomery Family will always hurt. But I hope that today they get some closure, and some assurances that Walker will get justice.”
The attorney general pointed to a few recent laws that the state has enacted since Montgomery’s death to help prevent future sextortion scenarios from happening.
Mississippi requires that digital service providers, or entities that create and operate online services where a person could post text, images and videos on a private or public account or enter chat rooms, must ask the age of all people creating an account with the service and make “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify the person’s age under the Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act that Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law in 2024.
It is a crime in Mississippi to groom a child for sexual exploitation under a bill Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law this year.
Montgomery’s story also inspired a law to ban sexual extortion, which Reeves signed into law in 2024.
“A person commits the offense of sexual extortion if the person intentionally threatens, including through the use of electronic mail or electronic communication, to release, exhibit or distribute a private image of another in order to compel or attempt to compel the victim to do any act or refrain from doing any act against his or her will, with the intent to obtain an additional private image or anything else of value,” House Bill 1196 says.
If the state convicts a person of sexual extortion, the offender must serve up to five years for the first offense, up to 10 years for the second and up to 15 for the third or subsequent offenses.
“We made sextortion a crime in Mississippi,” Fitch said. “What happened to Walker was not a defined criminal offense before. It is now. And coupled with the revenge porn law we passed in 2021 and the grooming law we passed this year, State prosecutors now have a broad range of tools to protect children from predators online.”
Mississippi House Rep. Jill Ford, R-Madison, was one of several lawmakers motivated by Montgomery’s death to introduce the bills to better help protect children online. She said in a Facebook post that she is proud of the laws producing results.
“Being the author of the Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act has been one of the greatest honors of my time in the Mississippi Legislature,” she said. “Walker’s story changed the way I looked at online safety, and I will always be grateful that his name is now attached to a law designed to help protect other children from the dangers that took him from us.”
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