Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Mom Sues Snapchat Claiming Sextortion Led to Son's Death

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Tim Barnett was a 13-year-old boy who loved karate and playing baseball. In April 2023, Tim's father found him dead from a gunshot wound in the front yard of their home in Sumter, South Carolina. Tim’s mother, Betsy Hauptman, said she found out months later from police that Tim had been the victim of sextortion on Snapchat. Hauptman is now suing the social media platform for over $10 million. Law&Crime’s Angenette Levy talks with Hauptman and one of her lawyers, Joe Cunningham, about the suit in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lccrimefix and access information about almost anyone!Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guests:Joe Cunningham https://x.com/JoeCunninghamSCBetsy HauptmanCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. It definitely has been. On April 6th, I woke up to every parent's worst nightmare, losing their own child. The mother of a 13-year-old boy takes on a social media giant, suing after her son dies by suicide. She claims he was the victim of sextortion on Snapchat, and the company didn't do enough to protect him. Timothy Barnett's mother and her lawyer are here with his story. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Timothy Barnett was like most 13-year-old boys. His mother has described him as a beautiful soul. He was a yellow belt in karate. He played baseball, and one day, he had hoped to play in

the big leagues. He also played in his school band. And like many teenagers, Tim was online, on social media. His mother, who you'll hear from in just a bit, says Snapchat was an app that Tim used often, and she had no idea that a predator was using it to extort her son. It's called sextortion. Timothy's mom says someone posing as a teen had talked him into sending photos of himself to her or snaps that were sexually explicit. That person then threatened to share those sexually explicit images if Tim didn't hand over some money. Betsy Hopman says the fear and shame drove Tim, her son, to take his own life. Timothy's father found him in their front yard on April 6, 2023. Tim had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Sumter, South Carolina.

Now Tim's mother is suing Snapchat. The lawsuit was initially filed in federal court in South Carolina, but it has been transferred to the Northern District of California. That's where Snapchat and a lot of social media companies do most of their business. The suit claims Snapchat is defectively designed with features that make the platform unreasonably dangerous for minors like Timothy. Snap failed to implement adequate age verification and other safeguards to protect vulnerable minor users from connecting with and being exploited by adult predators. The suit continues, as a direct and foreseeable consequence of Snap's unsafe design, lack of warnings,

and inadequate parental controls, Timothy fell victim to a sexual predator who extorted him by threatening to share sexually explicit images Timothy had been manipulated into sending via Snapchat. Unable to cope with the trauma, shame, and fear of exposure, Timothy took his own life. The suit is a wrongful death action and is asking for an excess of $10 million in damages, along with funeral and burial expenses and attorney's fees. The suit goes on to claim, defendant's product is designed in unsafe ways such as flawed age verification, lack of meaningful mechanisms to prevent sham accounts, default public profiles, matching and recommending connections between adults and minors, promoting unsolicited

messages and interactions from adults, and wholly inadequate and ineffective parental controls, among others, that allow children to be easily targeted, identified, accessed, and exploited. The suit makes a number of allegations, including that Snap has been negligent and hasn't taken steps to limit the creation of fake accounts, it also claims that Snapchat has the ability to figure out which accounts are minors posing as adults and vice versa. The suit states, For example, by making minors' profiles public by default,

Defendant has supplied sexual predators with detailed background information about children, including their friends, activities, activities interests and even location the world can be a really scary place and you don't always know who's a friend or a foe especially when it comes to hanging out and talking with people online truth finder comm is a website that can help you with that I have a family so I use truth finder for unlimited searches on the people that we all meet, especially my son. I've covered way too many stories about sex offenders and other criminals to know that you just can't be too careful. And Truthfinder will show you all of the sex offenders who live near you, which is really helpful to know.

I use Truthfinder all of the time for work and, of course, in my personal life. I've even run a background check on myself, my friends, my family, and neighbors just to see what's out there. And let me tell you, the information that's available is actually kind of shocking. So right now you can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix. Log on and start accessing information about almost anyone joining me to discuss this lawsuit is Timothy Barnett's mother her name is Betsy Hopman and her lawyer Joe Cunningham one of them thanks so much for joining us both of you Betsy I wanted to start with you please tell me a little bit about your son Timothy well thank you for having us. Tim was a 13

year old boy, all boy, loved baseball, loved animals. He was truly the life of the party. He was the middle child in our family and he was the best big brother to any child that came into his life. His friends described him as someone that they could rely on and tell anything to and know that it wouldn't go any further than him. And he was just a genuinely good person. And I had mentioned earlier in the show,

I heard you talk about him somewhere else on another podcast saying that he was a yellow belt in karate. I mean, he wanted to play Major League Baseball one day. I mean, he just sounded like your typical boy. Yeah, he just, in fact, three days, I think, before he passed. Well, actually, it was six days before he passed. He tested and got his yellow belt for karate um he was the first chair in his band at the middle school um playing saxophone which he picked up in sixth grade no one in our family has been musically trained at all um so going from

advanced to being our starting band going to advanced band the next year and then first chair in his seventh grade year was pretty amazing. And then he loved baseball. He played second base. And when he wasn't playing second base, he was that all around coach's favorite because he'd play any position and not complain as long as he was on the diamond. Were you aware that Tim was using Snapchat and other social media apps? So I was aware that he was on Snapchat and that he was on TikTok and then he had an Instagram and then also he had Facebook Messenger for kids

at one point we always check the kids phones we still do it religiously we did it we did it back then two times a week undisclosed days because we didn't want the kids to delete something that they knew that they shouldn't be doing or whatnot but we definitely tried to check it and unfortunately I didn't realize the amount of predators that are online I mean I knew it but I didn't think that they'd target children the way that they do. And I didn't know about sextortion and what sextortion was. Jo, I'll turn to you on this topic. I explained it kind of in the intro to this, what sextortion is, but in this lawsuit that you and Jim Griffin filed on behalf of Betsy,

you talked about sextortion and how the FBI has, you know, released some information about sextortion. So tell us a little bit about sextortion and how it works and how kids are targeted on these apps. Well, apps like Snapchat, particularly young boys are oftentimes a target and girls. But in this instance a young boy and uh oftentimes these young boys interact with what who they think are other young girls in a flirtatious manner and it it leads to the exchange of pictures and messages and then they come to find out that they're not speaking to who they think they are and the person then begins to extort them, as in this case was Timothy's case, for a daily amount. Otherwise, they will release any compromising messages or pictures, oftentimes pornographic in nature, to all of their friends and all of their

family members. And you got to remember, a 13-year-old kid like Timothy was, something like that can seem earth-shattering and just be too much to handle, as it is in this case. And this is happening so much online. It's become very, very pervasive, especially on an app like Snapchat, which lends itself to it with its disappearing messages or so-called disappearing pictures. The day before Tim died, he was seen doing a lot of scrolling on his phone. The next day, it was April 6th of last year, Tim's dad, as I had mentioned earlier, found him dead in the front yard. His death was ruled a suicide. After several months and just a feeling that there was more to Tim's death, Betsy Hopman found out last October from police in Sumter that Tim had been the victim of sextortion via Snapchat.

I had a detect, the lead detective of violent crimes and a staff sergeant tell me that they weren't able to get into his phone, that Timothy's suicide case was closed and that's what it was. It was ruled a suicide, nothing more. And I, at that point, kind of walked away defeated, asking for his phone and his Chromebook back. And they proceeded to tell me that they could get it back for me and bring it up the next, like I went up there the next day to get it. Still wasn't able to get into his phone. And then the next week, all week, I couldn't sleep, because something just was tugging at my soul. And the next week, I went back up to the police department and waited up there until I got a captain to speak to me about what was found in the subpoenas

of Snapchat. Because because unfortunately today's children today 99% of them I would say communicate more so on social media platforms whether it be Snapchat or Instagram or um those are the two big ones that I know of. They communicate there. And I told the detective that and I said, look, he communicated with his friends mainly on Snapchat because that's what the kids do a second subpoena because Snapchat was very vague in their response. And then finally, after speaking to the captain of investigations here at the police department, I found out on October 4th that Timothy was the victim of sex torsion and it did happen on Snapchat. Did the police tell you that or was it revealed to you in the records? It was not revealed to me in the records at all. I got the records back in mid-September after putting in a FOIA request and it, it wasn't until the captain of investigation had combed through everything that the police had put together in regards to the case that I was, I was told. is still an active and ongoing investigation and so we're still uncovering more information and

more data um to to find out uh you know the exact source the perpetrator and bring them to justice as well and that was going to be my next question there had to be a person operating that account somebody behind that account and we know there are digital fingerprints with everything so joe how likely is it that that person will be tracked down i mean you know you can't do anything with your phone these days without it being logged somehow betsy and i both know uh you know we met with the u.s attorney's office these are these are very difficult cases to prosecute by their very nature, particularly when you're dealing with a social media app like Snapchat, which has ostensibly disappearing messages and data. What we do know is that it is common, particularly off the Ivory Coast of Africa, for groups of individuals, gangs. And you can go online and look at this.

They even have scripts out there that they follow, how to pick your victims, how to engage with them, what to say to them, how to select a nude photograph. This has been happening for a while, and social media companies are aware of this as well and aware of these dangers. And so that's, that's why we have brought this, this litigant because these social media companies have the ability to identify, as you mentioned you know, you

can't do without the geolocation or things like that. So we are, we are, you know, I know the U S attorney's office and Homeland security is working to identify this person or persons. But, you know, what Betsy also wants to do is help educate people the dangers of social media, but also to right these wrongs and make sure these things are fixed so that no other family goes through the same thing that she has gone through. Betsy, I want you to talk to me a little bit about what this has been like for you as a mom to lose your son like this, and then to find out that he takes his own life because somebody's extorting him. And he felt so embarrassed and ashamed that he didn't feel like there was any other way out of this than by taking his own life.

I mean, this has just had to have been excruciating and just kind of soul crushing for you as a mother. It definitely has been. On April 6th, I woke up to every parent's worst nightmare, losing their own child. I'm angry. I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm disappointed. Unfortunately, I allowed my children to, my children have been on social media because I monitored it. But unfortunately, I trusted the social media providers, the tech companies, to set safeguards in place where they helped protect minors as well.

And I've told Joe this time in and time out out it shouldn't be harder to sign up for a dating account as an adult than it is to sign up for a social media account as a child what do you hope to accomplish with this lawsuit betsy because you're asking for a monetary award. You're asking for in excess of $10 million. But is there something more you want out of this than money? I want every parent in this entire country, and truth be told, in the entire world to know the dangers of social media and of sextortion, but also I want big tech to be held responsible to put the guidelines in place that they have, that

they have the capabilities of using. Their product designers and their engineers have this knowledge. Joe, this lawsuit has been transferred from the federal court in South Carolina from the federal court in South Carolina to the district court in Northern California. So what's the next step? It is at the very beginning of the process, and it's going to be a long road, and we're trying to hold them accountable, but it will be a long and lengthy process. Well, Betsy Hopman and Joe Cunningham, we really appreciate you making time and coming on to talk with me, and we will follow the case, Betsy, again. I'm so sorry for your loss as a mom. You know,

I think every mother feels for you, and I'm so sorry. I appreciate that. Thank you for having us. I contacted Snapchat for a comment on this lawsuit. At the time of this recording, the company has not responded to my requests for comments. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.