We guess he did it for State?
There’s a lot of pressure when you’re a budding influencer hoping to expand your social media empire, and that pressure apparently got to Rossi Lorathio Adams II (above) around the time he plotted to steal a domain name at gunpoint.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa, Adams, who went by the name “Polo” online, was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Monday after he was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by force, threats, and violence in April.
It all began in 2015 when Polo launched a series of accounts on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat called State Snaps when he was a student at Iowa State University. The accounts typically posted images of wild partying and sexually explicit behavior, usually involving college girls.
Unsurprisingly, the accounts attracted countless users wanting to tune in to the debauchery; one IG account reportedly gained 1.5 million followers. Yet while his social media empire was growing bigger by the day, Polo apparently grew more and more frustrated that he didn’t own the domain name for doitforstate.com, a nod to the popular hashtag #DoItForState the influencer used in most of the accounts’ comments and captions.
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Although the now-27-year-old already owned the doit4state.com URL, he wanted to buy doitforstate.com as well. Unfortunately, Ethan Deyo, the Cedar Rapids resident who owned the domain, refused to sell it.
Adams was unwilling to give up, though, so — per prosecutors — he hatched a plan to steal the coveted URL instead: in June 2017, the Iowa State icon asked his cousin Sherman Hopkins Jr. to break into Deyo’s home and try to steal the URL at gunpoint.
The news release states that Adams had found Deyo’s address through GoDaddy registration records, and had “provided Hopkins with a demand note, which contained instructions for transferring the domain to Adams’ GoDaddy account.”
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Upon entering the domain-owner’s home, Hopkins — who was apparently equipped with pantyhose on his head, a hat and sunglasses, a stolen gun, and a taser — kicked down Deyo’s bedroom door and ordered the victim to follow the instructions on the demand note. He then reportedly pistol-whipped Deyo in the head and held the gun to his head.
Deyo tried to wrestle the gun away from his assailant and was shot in the leg, but eventually managed to shoot Hopkins in the chest multiple times before calling the police. Hopkins was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2018.
Adams is currently being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he’s brought to federal prison. In addition to his prison sentence, the influencer was ordered to pay nearly $9,000 in restitution, $3,957 for the costs of prosecution, and $22,000 to the Court in attorney fees.
[Image via Linn County Correctional Center]