CEDAR RAPIDS, IA — Before an ill-fated plot that could land him in prison for 20 years, social media influencer Rossi Lorathio Adams II was riding high. At one time, the 26-year-old former Iowa State University student from Cedar Rapids, who goes by “Polo,” had more than 1 million followers on State Snaps, the social media company he founded in 2014.

State Snaps, which interfaces with popular social media apps like Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, is filled with photos and videos of randy college antics, like public drunkenness and nudity, often accompanied with the slogan “Do it for State!”

Over in Ames, the home of Iowa State, university leaders weren’t exactly loving State Snaps.

The posts cast the college in a poor light and besides, administrators argued, many of them violated the terms of social media companies whose feeds ended up on the State Snaps website.

Take it down, they told Adams.

Adams dug in and upped his game.

A previously registered domain, doitforstate.com, would be a nifty addition to his growing social media presence and Adams wanted to buy it. The owner told Adams to numerous times that he wasn’t willing to sell. That didn’t seem to matter.

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Even when his friend used the domain to promote a concert and got a message with gun emojis, the domain owner refused to budge. It wasn’t for sale, he told Adams.

That’s when Adams’ downward spiral began.

He desperately wanted the domain — so much that he hired his cousin, Sherman Hopkins Jr., a convicted felon, to acquire the domain transfer at gunpoint, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa.

In June 2017, Hopkins broke into a house in Cedar Rapids with the intent to acquire the domain by force, the statement said. He was armed with a stolen gun and a Taser weapon, and disguised himself with a pair of pantyhose stretched over his face and dark sunglasses to cover his eyes.

The victim tried to escape and barricaded himself in an upstairs bedroom, but Hopkins kicked in the door, grabbed the man by the arm and forced him into his home office, where he kept his computer.

Hopkins put the gun to the man’s temple and demanded he do as he was told — connect to the internet and transfer doitforstate.com to Adams’ GoDaddy.com account, per the instructions on a demand note Adams had written.

He “pistol whipped the victim several times in the head,” the statement said.

“Fearing for his life, the victim quickly turned to move the gun away from his head,” the statement said. “The victim then managed to gain control of the gun.”

During the struggle, the victim was shot in the leg, but he shot Hopkins multiple times in the chest before calling 911.

Hopkins recovered, and last year was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Adams went to court earlier this month. After a four-day trial concluded Thursday, a federal jury in Cedar Rapids deliberated for bout an hour before convicting Adams of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by force, threats, and violence.

Adams will remain in custody pending sentencing, when he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

A sentencing date has not yet been set.