Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - 'ALL AMERICAN' TEEN STAR ATHLETE DEAD AFTER DEPRAVED 'SEXTORTION' SCAM

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

On a Thursday afternoon, Bryce Tate heads to the gym after school as usual. During his workout, Bryce receives a text from an unsaved number. The texter claims she’s a junior at another high school is close by and has seen Bryce at the gym before. The unknown texter tells Bryce she knows some of his friends, who tell her about his impressive basketball skills, and she wants to introduce herself. The teens flirt back and forth all afternoon. Bryce comes home from the gym in a great mood, still engrossed in his text conversation with the pretty stranger. Bryce is thrilled that it's taco night and happily chats with his parents at the dinner table. After clearing the table, Bryce heads outside to shoot some hoops, but he’s very distracted by his new friend. Just after 7 p.m., Amanda and Adam Tate are shocked by the sound of a gunshot and rush into Adam’s man cave. Their happy teenager shot himself. The hysterical parents called 911, but Bryce was gone the moment he pulled the trigger. What no one understands is why Bryce would take his own life. In the 20 minutes before taking his own life, Bryce receives 120 text messages. The messages reveal that Bryce offers the only money he has access to $30. But it isn’t enough. Joining Nancy Grace: Jennifer Buta - Mother to Jordan DeMay, Victim of Sextortion Joe Cunningham - Attorney who Specializes in Sextortion Cases (previously represented the family of Timothy Barnett, a 13 yr-old victim of sextortion); Facebook and Instagram: JoeCunninghamLaw Melissa McCarty- Investigative Journalist, Author of “The Confident Voice: Speak with Calm, Clarity and Connection" and "The Making of a Crime Reporter;" Instagram: MelissaMcCarty1 Dr. Shari Schwartz - Forensic Psychologist (specializing in Capital Mitigation and Victim Advocacy), Author: "Criminal Behavior" and "Where Law and Psychology Intersect: Issues in Legal Psychology;" X: @TrialDoc Todd Shipley - Digital Cyber-Crime Expert, Former Detective Sergeant with the Reno, Nevada Police Dept. - with 25 year in law enforcement, Author of: "Surviving a Cyberattack: Securing Social Media and Protecting Your Home" and “Investigating Internet Crimes: An Introduction to solving Crimes in Cyberspace;" X @webcase Titania Jordan - Chief Parent Officer, Bark Parental Controls, Author: "Parenting In A Tech World;" Instagram/X: @TitaniaJordan Sydney Sumner - Investigative Reporter, 'Crime Stories'   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. An all-American teen star athlete dead after a depraved sex-stortion scam. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. I want to thank you for being with us. In Cross Lanes, West Virginia, 15-year-old Bryce Tate explores social media like any teenager,

unaware of the hidden dangers that threatened to isolate and endanger him. It's overwhelming, overwhelming to parents like me who have incredible, scrubbed in sunshine, all American teen children to discover your child dead and then to learn. It's because of literally, I had to look for the right word to describe this, a depraved sextortion scheme. Listen. They'll go onto their social media accounts and gather their friends list, and that's who they tell them they're going to release to. So once you feel like the world's going to know what's going to happen, and you feel like you're, you know, you have no other way to turn

to. Unfortunately, a lot of kids in this country take their own life. It was detective pain of the Conachianist's office who did the forensic examination on the cell phone and was able to find that Bryce was going through a complicated ordeal called sextortion. year old girl texting Bryce quickly escalates. She sends Bryce racy photos and asks him to reciprocate. Afraid to lose her attention, Bryce eventually gives in to her request and the script immediately flips. The texture reveals themselves as a scammer and threatens to send Bryce's explicit photos to everyone he knows unless Bryce pays $500. It's just too much for a young teen, especially a very naive young teen to take in. And now this boy, a boy, is dead. You just heard Sergeant Jeremy

Byrne speaking to WSAZ. Before I go straight out to our investigative journalist, Melissa McCarty, I want to go to a very special guest joining me. It's Jennifer Buta, the mother of Jordan DeMay, a victim of sex extortion. Jennifer, after all your crusading, after everything you have been through, it never ends. It never ends. When I heard this, you were the first person I thought of. Yeah, it just keeps happening to our children when I heard about this case. I was very triggered by it because emotionally I have stood in those parents' shoes. I'm still standing in them. And I'm angry that this continues to happen to our children. And when is enough going to be enough, and someone will step in to prevent this from taking our kids' lives.

Jennifer, I want other parents and other teens to hear what you have to say. After Jordan, your baby died following literally a depraved extortion scheme. That night at supper, I sat down with the twins and we talked. A little girl at their school had sent topless photos around. course the one guy that got the photos sent them to everybody and the little girl is totally shamed and I say guys this happens sometimes you're talking to somebody and they'll want a picture of you and you send it I've got to tell you about Jordan and they were stunned and they didn't want to talk about it but I told them about it and I brought him up many times since

then could you tell the viewers parents like me and young team What happened to Jordan? Jordan was contacted by an alleged female on social media, and after sending some messages back and forth regaining his trust, he thought he was talking to this beautiful young lady who had mutual friends with him. This person asked Jordan to send an explicit photo. once he did, the whole script flipped, and immediately they started demanding money from him. It started with $1,000. He did eventually send them $300, but it wasn't enough. And they kept putting the pressure on him for hours until he finally said,

I'm going to take my own life. And they encouraged it saying, we're going to watch you die a miserable death. And my son did take his own life within six hours. Now it has happened again. It has happened over and over and over. And I want you to see what this young boy's mom has left now. Your mom's here. Look at your windmill going.

Thanks, good. Your movie does. Buddy and your neckluck on. There's been a lot of snow, buddy. Yes, there has, son. I almost couldn't play that. that because that is Amanda and Adam speaking to their boy, just 15 in the snow at his grave. Listen.

Bryce is Amanda and Adam Tate's only child and the apple of their eye. The 15-year-old is a sophomore at Nitro High School in Cross Lanes, a standout student, star basketball player, funny, goofy, and a Christian fellowship youth leader. When Bryce isn't in school, he's lifting weights at the gym, shooting hoops, or spending time with his loving family. Him in life, and then after this deadly, depraved extortion scam, he is dead. And his mother and father visit him at the cemetery. On a Thursday afternoon, Bryce heads to the gym after school. Bryce gets a text. The texture claims she's a junior at another high school and has seen Bryce at the gym before.

She knows some of his friends who told her about his impressive basketball skills and wanted to introduce herself. The teens flirt back and forth all afternoon. Bryce comes home from the gym still engrossed in his text conversation with the pretty stranger. Bryce is thrilled his taco night and has plenty of appetite happily chatting with his parents at the dinner table. After clearing the table, Bryce heads outside to shoot some hoops, but he's distracted by his new friend. Sidney Sumner, Crime Stories investigative reporter, what happened? Bryce Tate was texted by a beautiful 17-year-old girl who convinced him she went to a high school in town. She named drops his friends in this conversation saying she knows them in passing.

They've mentioned Bryce before, gave him, gave his phone number to her because she was interested in maybe having a relationship with him at some point. So these teens have a conversation. They're flirting. she's escalating. And within three hours, this girl reveals herself as a scammer and wants $500 from Bryce to not send nude photos that he gave her to everyone he knows. And this 15-year-old boy who only has $30 in his bank account is pushed to suicide because they tell him they will ruin his life. Just after 7 p.m., Amanda and Adam Tate are shocked by the sound of a gunshot and rush into Adams' man cave. Their happy teenager shot himself. The hysterical parents call

911, but Bryce was gone the moment he pulled the trigger. What no one understands is why Bryce would take his own life. It was on November 6th that the parents of Bryce Tate had called 911 because their son had taken his own life with a firearm. You were hearing Sergeant Jeremy Burns from our friends at WCHS to Tonya Jordan joining a special guest, the chief parent officer at Bark Parental. She's the author of Parenting in a tech world. It's just too much for a teen that young to take in that if a naked photo of them or a body part of them goes out to their family or their friends, people at school, death would be better than that. They, they can't understand what's happening.

But to tell you, this is happening all over the country. This scammer, this scammer that might as well have held a gun to this teen boy's head, had thousands and thousands of teen children, boys and girls that he was targeting. How does it happen? Explain to me how it happened. And I told my children right to their face, I've seen all your body, since you were born. I don't care if I get a picture of your body part.

Don't care. This is what happened to Jordan DeMay. This is what happened to Bryce. And I name out people their age. This has happened to, but children that young to Tonya, they don't understand. Our brains are not fully formed until we're in our mid-20s. And so children are not capable because of their prefrontal cortex to make the right decisions all the time. They need to know that they can come to you at any time and

let you know about bad things that have happened and you're not going to smack the phone out of their hand or ground them for a year because to your point, it is not better to die by suicide than to have to fess up to this shameful and embarrassing decision. It's also not their fault because they're being targeted. They're being targeted on Instagram, on TikTok, talk, on text message, on Roblox, on Discord, YouTube, you name it. They're being targeted everywhere, and they think that they've made a connection, a potential love interest. It is normal for them to feel this excitement, but it's not normal to have such odds stacked

against them. And so it's just, it's heartbreaking. You know, Melissa McCarty joining us, renowned investigative journalist and author, Melissa, again, thank you for being with us. Melissa, the scammer gets into their social media, the victim social media. They friend all their friends. They find out who they are chatting with, who's on their list, you know, on Insta. You can see everybody that you're friends with and threaten to expose the child to them

with the child's own naked photo that they have tweedled out of them. What happened here, Melissa? This was a targeted operation, and it's a wide-scale operation, these scammers, how they work. And just like you say, they look into the social media. It's easy for them to earn his trust by saying, I know you from the gym, we have mutual friends.

They've already done a surveillance on his life before targeting him. So when they reached out and he received that random text messages from an unknown number at 4.30 like any other day, It was someone posing a scammer posing as a teenage girl. So that conversation was able to move so quickly and escalate so fast because Bryce Tate ended up

getting 120 text messages within a three hour time span before he ended up taking his life. And the operation is to put him in a state of panic. So he can't do anything but act in an irrational way to where he doesn't have time to think, he just acted. And it's this fear organized operation targeting young teenagers. While you were talking, Melissa McCarty, all I can think about is my own boy, John David.

To Dr. Sherry Schwartz joining us, Forensic Psychologist at panthermitigation.com. Dr. Sherry, I have thousands and thousands of videos of my son and daughter, but she's more reticent than my son. I've got photos, videos just like that of him crazy dancing all over the house of me in the front yard saying, run John David, run, run,

run as fast as you can. And we video him and it never got old, running around the front yard, just the two of them so full of joy and life. And that's all this mom and dad have

left. Watching those videos over and over and over. You know how many videos I've got of them at the cemetery? It's heartbreaking. And I'll circle back to Titania, but Dr. Sherry, a lot of parents don't want to tell their children. They don't want to think, oh, my child might send a nude photo. My child might send a topless photo. It happens in this world, but you don't want your child dead. And it's, did you hear what Melissa McCarty was saying and Sydney Sumner that he was bombarded? I think he got up to around 300. But I know in the space of like an hour, he got 120 threatening text messages.

Your life will be ruined. I will make sure I ruin your life. What will your family say when they see your penis? What will your family? What will your mom think about you then get the money? I just, it's horrible, Dr. Sherry. It's horrible, and it's a tactic designed to not give the child a chance to think. It's used on adults too, and it's a pretty effective tactic, right?

When I want you to do something and I want to take control of your life, I'm just going to bombard you and not give you a moment to think about how to solve the problem without giving me exactly what I want. This is classic predatory behavior, grooming the child to get these photos and making them think they're a friend, a peer, and then turning around and saying, now I'm going to blow up your life. I'm going to ruin your life and to continue to bombard you with these messages. And a child, one of your guests said about the brain development and not having good impulse control, which is true. And so you wouldn't think, let me put down the phone. you're nervous and you're thinking about how to solve the problem.

It's just horrible. And, you know, another thing, Dr. Sherry Schwartz, when we're at the supper table, we're talking about this kid and that kid that all go to school with John David and Lucy and they'll say, well, so-and-so's dating so-and-so. I'm like, they don't even drive. What do you mean they're dating? They're just talking. They're talking.

And I'm like, talking on the phone? And they're like, no, no. Oh, they're on their Insta, their Snapchat, their, that's dating in their minds. And these scammers can go on the victims, wherever they are on Insta, on Snapchat, and they can see very easily who they have friended. I'll just use that term, although it doesn't apply to everything. And then they can then find out all this, what the child thinks is private info. oh, I go to ABC school. I play soccer. I play football. I'm in the cooking club and so forth and so on. And so when the

scammer speaks to the child, the scammer has enough information to make it seem real. Like it really is a cute girl from the high school across town. That's how it happens. Exactly. That's exactly how it happens. In fact, one of the pieces of advice that police will give out to school-age children, their parents, is don't write their name on their backpack. It's the same principle because a predator can call out their name. Hey, Alyssa, and the child doesn't realize, oh, it's on my backpack. So that's where the predator got it. It's the same idea. The child doesn't think about, oh, I posted these things on my social media and this person could be using this against me. Hey, Bryce, let me tell him this.

What? Hey, Bryce. Mommy had to put these cowgirl boots on because you wouldn't believe it. At her house, I was wearing tennis shoes after we went to the gym. And I busted my butt twice. I know. Yes. She didn't get hurt, though.

She's all right. We love you. It hurt my back and everything. We love you, buddy. I love you, Bryce. Bryce Tate, a high school honors student, enjoys sports and family time. But his safety is. threatened when a text from an unknown number claiming to be a neighborhood girl lures him

into sending explicit photos, unaware it's a digital deception for financial gain. Joining me is Joe Cunningham, high-profile lawyer who specializes in sex-stortion cases, who has previously represented the family of Timothy Barnett, who is the 13, 13, one three-year-old victim of this type of scam, a deadly scam. And you can find him at joe cunningham law.com. Joe, thank you for being with us. I wish we were speaking under different circumstances. But in the case, one of the many cases that you've handled, it struck me that Tim, Timmy, Timothy Barnett was just 13 years old. He can't, he's too young to even process what's happening. And then his parents find him dead.

And it doesn't end. You know, you would think Joe Cunningham that once you put out a PSA public service announcement and you publicize it and I publicize it and it's on all the news outlets that parents would talk to their children and children would understand, but they're too young to understand. Joe, explain. That's true, Nancy. And these cases are some of the most emotionally tough cases that I deal with. with. They follow a similar pattern and a similar script, and the results are always just

shattering. I mean, I'm a parent, you're a parent, and I got a committee, Nancy, for ringing the bell on this issue so early on. And it still amazed me how many parents have no idea about these extortion schemes that are going on and how just how evil they are as well. I can't think of anybody more evil than those people on the other side of their phones or their computer screens who are, you know, have these schemes ongoing to try to attack the most vulnerable people in this world, our children. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, Joe Cunningham is with us. He's joining us out of Charleston. South Carolina. He handles cases like this all over the country. To Todd Shipley, joining us, digital cybercrime expert, former detective in Reno, Nevada, PD, 25 years in LA, and

author of surviving a cyber attack, securing social media, protecting your home, investigating internet crimes, and on and on. Todd, thank you for being with us. Todd. Joining us today, Todd, I don't know if you heard her is Jennifer Butta, and Jennifer's son, Jordan DeMay, was one of the first cases like this. I investigated Todd. And about two weeks after that, Todd, my producer sent me a teen extortion case. I said, we just covered that. Do you not remember Jennifer? We just did that. And she said, this is a different one and then it hit me like a ton of bricks Todd Shipley how common this is Todd it's too common and that becomes the problem that these scammers have figured out a different way

to try to go after our children and that's why I write about my latest book about how to protect our kids and what to look for because there are sometimes signs that these things are occurring and we've got to be better about trying to figure out what's happening to our children because these attackers prey on them every day and they're going out there constantly looking for this kind of thing to get small amounts of money relatively but they're having a huge impact on our children and it's terrible it's straight up blackmail is what it is it's blackmail it's cyberbullying it's extortion there's so many things going on at this and it puts fear and the kids into their hearts and minds. In the 20 minutes before taking his own life, Bryce receives 120 text messages

from the sextortionist. Bryce offers the only money he has access to, $30. But the extortionist tells him it isn't enough. The person on the other side of the phone actually encourages Bryce to kill himself, writing. His life is already over. Adam and Amanda Tate are devastated, unable to pick up the Christmas gifts already underneath the tree. Bryce knew he could confide in them about anything. The scammer's ability to shatter that bond so quickly is a testament to their insidious power. From our friends at WCHS to Jennifer Butta joining us, Jordan DeMay's mother, who has gone on a crusade after she lost her boy to a extortionist. And you know, Jennifer, sextortion really is, it's a euphemism. It's like putting perfume on the pig.

because the torture that Jordan went through, the emotional and mental torture he went through. And before he killed himself, it's excruciating. Explain to the listeners and viewers how you discovered that Jordan was dead. Jordan sent me a text message at 3.41 in the morning that said, Mother, I love you. and when I got up the next morning and saw it I texted him back he did not respond I texted him a second time he didn't respond and Jordan and I were very very close so he would always respond to me and something just told me things were very wrong because Jordan would respond I texted him a third time and when he didn't respond I reached out to his girlfriend to see if he was at school then I contacted his dad and his dad found him in his bedroom and he had taken his own life.

O'Gashi, pretending to be this young woman, persuaded Jordan to send a sexually explicit image of himself. Once Samuel Ogashi had that sexually explicit image in his hand, he then turned to extort Jordan de Mae for money, threatening to reveal the image to Jordan's family and friends if he did not comply. This is something that probably would have been laughing about in 10 or 15 years after he's graduated college and gotten married and had kids and bought his first home and, you know, got a career job and did all the things you'd look back and kind of like, that was stupid, right? But in that moment, you can't. They're not old enough to understand. They're not developed enough to understand. You're hearing Jordan's dad, that's John DeMay speaking, back to Jordan's mother, Jennifer. you know what, John's right. Years ahead, they said, hey, you remember when I sent that naked picture? What, what was I thinking? And everyone would have laughed and it, even if it was even

mentioned, it would just be, you know, a blip on the radar, a speed bump that happened 10 years before. You and Jordan had a very, very close relationship. What did this scammer say to him? that made him feel his only choice was death they flooded jordan with messages as well and they put pressure on by having a countdown so he would have to do things within a certain period of time and it really ramped up the anxiety for him he was begging them to stop he was begging for his own life and when he was worn out and could not go anymore and said he would take his own life They encouraged that. And in the middle of the night, my son took his own life alone,

and that's something that no child should have to go through this, no child. To Tonya Jordan, Bark, parental control chief parent officer, and I have Bark. And no, I'm not a paid ambassador or sponsor, but Bark is a feature you put on your child's devices and every time it's so very word sensitive and I use this example because it's the best example I can think of I got an alert

I nearly fell off my chair because I was sitting right here in the studio in a break I looked over and I got a bark alert that John David had communicated about self-harm. I'm like, what? I immediately, you know,

stopped the taping and I looked. He is a soccer goalie and he saved a goal and it was really hard. He did a horizontal dive. Of course I have a picture of it. He's completely horizontal and his arm went through the net and he got a big bruise and he got in the picture. It's him showing off a bruise. He goes, it was worth that. And he's talking about he made the save. But when I saw self-harm. I was so upset. And what I'm trying to think, that's how sensitive it is. The other day I got one, Titania, an alert of an ugly word or something to do with sex. I'm like, oh, I looked at it, guess what it was? The Nancy Gray Show. We were talking about Sean Combs, and he is a subscriber, and it came up on bark. I'm like, that said, I want to talk

to you, to Tanya, because you deal with this every day. You can explain better than I can't. And maybe Joe Cunningham can explain it as well. How the scammer, this person, like in Jordan's case, Ogashi, Samuel Ogashi, far thousands of miles away. How does he know what's happening in the Target's life? How did he know to say, hey, I'm Julie from Westside High. And I've been to your soccer gaming. You're awesome. And I know your friends. Johnny. And Devin and May, I know them. We all go to the same, blah, blah, blah, blah. How do they get the information on the target to make themselves so believable?

You know, it starts with us. It starts with the parents. We are curating a digital footprint for our children. So it's very important if and when you post anything about your child online, A, you think twice. B, you only post privately. Do not make anything public on your Instagram. on your Facebook, please, because they will go to the parents' accounts to figure out what they

posts about their kids. Then if your children have social media, which I don't recommend until at least they're 16 years old, they need to have private accounts. These extortionists and predators and pedophiles can find your children very easily online, especially because even if they have a private account on Instagram, they can put in their bio, you know, find me on Snapchat and their username. They leave little breadcrumbs and trails. The predators can see who they're connected to, befriend them, and it only takes one or two acceptance or accepting of a friend request or a quick ad on Snap to help them put the puzzle pieces together to give them just enough information to pretend to be a peer of your child and trick them.

Good kids make bad choices. Smart children are being fooled every day. The FBI has reported that extortion is a crime that we all need to be paying attention to and it's time for parents to wake up. It was on November 6th that the parents of Bryce Tate had called 911 because their son had taken his own life with a firearm. Just after 7 p.m., Amanda and Adam Tate are shocked by the sound of a gunshot and rush into Adams' man cave. Their happy teenager shot himself. The hysterical parents called 911, but Bryce was gone the moment he pulled the trigger. What no one understands is why Bryce would take his own life. In just three hours, the interaction escalates to the unimaginable.

After being pressured into sending explicit photos, they demanded $500 or they would release the photo to family and friends. When Bryce said he didn't have the money, their tax turned deadly. This horrific extortion, I call it a murder on the hills of the same scenario with a little boy, Timothy Barnett. It was a morning like every other morning. My husband and I got up with the alarm. He went about his day, walked out the front door. A few minutes later, I get a phone call saying, lock the doors and check on the kids. So I go about the kids' rooms.

They're all there except for Timothy. So I checked to see if he was in the bathroom. He wasn't. Checked the kitchen and he wasn't there. So I walked out to the garage. Again, he wasn't there, and panic set in. So I called my husband back, and I said, what's going on? He's like someone's sleeping in her front yard.

And I said, I can't find Timothy. And at that point, I realized I woke up into every mother's nightmare. She can't find her little boy, Timmy, Timothy. And then the husband says, somebody's sleeping in the front yard. The body in the front yard is Timothy. cameras showed Timothy sitting in the family car for two hours the night before, frantically scrolling on his phone. Timothy's Snapchat revealed the 13-year-old sent a stranger $35 a day to prevent them posting an explicit photo of him online. One of Timothy's last messages begged the stranger to stop, reading, please, I'm just a child.

Unfortunately, I was naive enough to not think that predators, well, I knew that there were, predators out there. I didn't think that there were predators so bold that would want to hurt a 13-year-old. And there are. Can you even imagine your 13-year-old child killing themselves and they're lying out in the front yard while you're looking for them inside? Joe Cunningham with us, high-profile lawyer who specializes in cases just like this. And he represented that beautiful mom of Timmy Barnett. at just 13 years old. When we say predator, that's really not the right word.

Have you ever actually seen a hyena? I have, yeah. Have you? Because they have this freaky, high-pitched laugh. It sounds like crazy laugh, like maybe the Joker on Batman, like crazy, high-pitched. kind of cross between a yell and a scream, and they will attack a living person if that living person is trying to drag away a dead carcass. They will attack the living person and they go in packs. They're evil. They smell. They smell. They eat rotting, decayed flesh.

That's what these scammers. Scammers's not even the right word. They're killer. that's what they are, to go after our babies, our children. I mean, since Timmy's case that you worked on, there have been so many others, including the one we're covering right now, Joe? Yeah, I think as of late, there's been over 2,000 cases in the United States. And you're right, Nancy, this is just pure evil. And a lot of it stemming from these gangs along the ivory coat. of Africa, but it's happening all over the globe, groups like 7-6-4 who are encouraging kids to either

mutilate themselves or carve those numbers, those gang numbers, into their bodies. Put him up. Wait, well, wait. They trick children into mutilating, cutting themselves. That's right. That's right. This group 764. And then oftentimes, And request them to upload pictures of the cuts. And if it's not deep enough, they'll ask them to cut deeper. I mean, it is completely sadistic, Nancy, as to what's going on. There are many groups and gangs in it for the money, and there are other groups that are in it just for the torture of our kids.

And then they'll encourage those kids to bring their younger siblings into the mix. What's happening right now is it should be a wake-up call for all parents right now. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. In the crucial 20 minutes before his death, scammers relentlessly pressure Bryce to end his life, culminating in a tragic gunshot that plunges his parents into unfathomable grief. How many children will die because of extortion? Listen. I am more determined to rot your life than to make it a waste, a trash can, a shame, a dishonor,

a hell, a real disaster, a hell on earth, and I remind you that I am heartless. I have no pity to rot a life as well as yours. This was one of almost 200 messages sent to my child over the span of 19 and a half hours. I am begging you to stand with this. Stand up. Do something. From C-SPAN, children as young as 12 and 13. dying at the hands of these online hyenas.

I want to go back to Jennifer Buta joining us. Her son lost his life to one of these scammers. And I don't know if you feel the same way, Jennifer, but scammer really is, is, that's like editing the truth. There's so much worse than a scammer. That's putting it mildly, calling them a scanner. I mean, they are responsible for killing my son effectively. Does the name Gavin Guffy ring a bell?

Because I will never forget him. A month after Gavin shoots himself in a bathroom at home, his family members start receiving Instagram messages, asking for money in exchange for not releasing nude photos of Gavin. His father even gets a message, did I tell you your son begged for his life? The Guffie's discovered Gavin, had been tricked into sending nude photos to a person he believed was a girl his age, then extorted.

Gavin was being blackmailed. That was all the information that I knew was that he was being blackmail. But what happened was Gavin was, he got caught up in extortion. And this is a major crime. They took, looks like, Hunter Biden headlines and put pictures of Gavin and put my name and his name on the headlines. and were threatening to release it. And it was pictures to this girl that he was talking to online. Gavin now dead. That was his father, who is a South Carolina representative. So even people that are influential and prestigious,

their children have died at the hands of these online hyenas that are literally tearing at the flesh. of our children and many of these so-called scammers are in different countries. And isn't it true to Tanya that one scammer can have, can be working on literally thousands of children at the same time. Like you and I go to work. They go down to their basement where they have a fleet of screens and they're working all day long to get $30 off this kid, $300 off that kid, $20 off this kid. And it works. They make a living off our children to Tanya?

Absolutely. And Joe Cunningham alluded to the 764 network, which is a very real, credible and frightening threat. It's very dark and it is a network. They have multiple entities across the globe and using the help of AI and chatbots to create the relationship, almost like a business development spam caller.

And then once they realized, they have somebody on the hook, then it transfers to a human. It's, it is a multifaceted, very deep, very highly organized criminal ring, and our children are the collateral damage. A little boy, just 13 years old, Jay Taylor loses his life. They were saying horrible things, misgendering him, calling him bad. They said that they got him to kill himself, and they were saying in the group chat. They wanted to do it to someone else.

Jay Taylor 13 makes a Discord account to connect with other crocheters. Users pressured the teen to kill himself. Jay responds, he doesn't want to die. But after an hour of constant messages, Jay creeps out of his home, props up an Instagram live stream, and hangs himself from a fence. An Australian sends Jay's final stream to his devastated parents, the video eventually leading to a 20-year-old German med student. They took advantage of Jay's loneliness and his kindness.

and then they completely preyed on his insecurities. That from our friends at ABC's Nightline, Melissa McCarty, joining us, investigative journalist. In that case, a 13-year-old boy is dead because of a German med student, a medical student that was running the scam? This is an international crime circuit, Nancy, just targeting and praying on innocence. That's what they do. There are hundreds of cases that the FBI is investigating. just like that one. You're right, Melissa.

And it's not just little boys, girls too. Amanda 12 goes to a chat site with friends and receives compliments and attention. One asks Amanda to flash the camera and eventually the girl gives in the man uses the photos to blackmail Amanda. When she refuses, the extortionist sends the photo to classmates, friends, and family members.

Amanda is bullied relentlessly switching schools three times with the extortionists following her every move. I got a message on Facebook from him, don't know him or how he knew me. It said, if you don't put on a show from me, I will send your boobs. He knew my address, school, relatives, friends, family names, threatens to knock at my door at 4 a.m. It was a police.

My photo was sent everywhere. Amanda hangs herself in her home. Police discover communications with Todd on Dutch National, Aidan Coben's computer, along with a list of 6,000 potential victims and their social networks. He's now serving 13 years behind bars. A Dutch National got into this little girl, and that was her. That was Amanda Todd telling her story with cards, holding up those cue cards that I was reading for you on YouTube. And now that precious little girl,

precious, just 12 years old when this started is dead. She's dead. And the guy that did it, a Dutch national got 13 years behind bars, he's probably already out. If you know or think you know anything about crimes like these, you can save a life. 1-800 call FBI. That's a cyber tip line, 800 call FBI, or go to cybertipline.org. We remember an American hero, Deputy Sheriff Daniel Ken, of Wyandat County Sheriff's, Ohio, killed in the line of duty, leaving behind a grieving wife and two little children, American hero, Deputy Sheriff Daniel Ken. Nancy Grace, signing off.

Goodbye for it. This is an I-heart podcast.