On November 23, a Louisiana State University student filed a complaint with the LSU Police Department, reporting that he had been targeted in an alleged extortion scheme after meeting someone he believed to be female on social media.
After the two exchanged explicit photos, the student discovered that the person he had been corresponding with was actually male. Police later identified the individual as 23-year-old Jauan Wright, according to WBRZ.
The student told police that Wright threatened to release the photos to his family and friends unless the two engaged in sex.
Fearing the release of the photos, the student allegedly agreed to have sex with Wright. According to the Baton Rouge-area newspaper The Advocate, Wright used smart glasses to secretly record the encounter, which took place in an LSU dorm room.
Wright allegedly used a burner account to email the student and the student’s mother, sending a video showing the student naked in the shower. The student told investigators he was unaware that he was being recorded.
Wright also allegedly demanded and received $250 from the student through Apple Pay.
On December 5, Wright was arrested and booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on charges of extortion and nonconsensual disclosure of a private image.
Wright was released from custody after signing a protective order barring him from any further digital or physical contact with the student. He is scheduled for a bond review before 19th Judicial District Court Commissioner Kina Kimble on April 13, 2026.
The case is the latest in a series of incidents that highlight the risks of online dating in the digital era.
In a 2015 case from the United Kingdom, a woman, Gayle Newland, was convicted and jailed for six-and-a-half years for sexual assault after posing as a man and courting another woman through Facebook.
The two cyberdated for two years, met in person, and had sex, with the victim agreeing to be blindfolded during their meetups since Newland — posing as the male “Kye Fortune” claimed to be recovering from a brain tumor surgery and didn’t want the victim to see his scars. The victim eventually removed the blindfold after attempting fellatio on Fortune and found that Fortune was actually a woman wearing a strap-on penis.
In 2021, a woman in Glasgow, Scotland, pleaded guilty to using a fake Grindr account to solicit explicit photos from a man, which she later used to extort money from him.
And, as reported by BBC News, police in the English county of Hertfordshire were recently asked by an independent watchdog to examine whether “homophobic assumptions” contributed to investigative failures in five cases in which organized gangs allegedly used Grindr to target, entrap, and blackmail men. At least one victim died by suicide, another was later found dead, and four of the cases were linked to the same group.
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