(Trends Wide) — Gavin Guffey sent a message to his younger brother and friends in the early hours of July 27 last year. It was short and cryptic: the symbol of love in the shape of a heart — <3 — on a black background.
Minutes later, in a hallway bathroom a few steps from his room, the 17-year-old shot himself to death. His father, Brandon Guffey, says he was at his home in Rock Hill, South Carolina, when he heard a deafening noise. He sounded like someone had slammed a bowling ball into the ground.
She ran to the bathroom and found her oldest son bleeding on the floor between the bathtub and the toilet.
For weeks, the grieving family searched for signs of anything they had missed. They then discovered that extortionists posing as a young woman had sent Gavin nude photos and asked for explicit images of himself. Once Gavin shared photos with them, they blackmailed him by threatening to post them if he didn’t pay.
Gavin Guffey had just graduated from high school when he committed suicide in July of last year. Courtesy of Brandon Guffey
Gavin had unknowingly become a victim of sexual extortion, or “sextortion,” a crime the FBI warns increasingly targets minors. Sextortion cases have increased in the past year, federal officials said in a recent security alert issued in partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The cases are contributing to an alarming number of suicides across the country, according to the alert.
At the time of his son’s death, Guffey, 43, was running for state representative in the House. Six months later, after a winning campaign, he took office. His first order of business was to introduce a state bill to criminalize the type of scam that led to the death of his son.
His fellow House lawmakers unanimously approved the bill last month. State senators passed the legislation Thursday — calling it “Gavin’s Law” — as a tearful Guffey watched from the Senate chambers.
Under the law, scammers who extort a minor or an adult at risk face up to 5 years in prison for the first offense.
Lawmakers are expected to send the bill to Gov. Henry McMaster soon for it to become law.
For weeks, the family tried to unravel the mystery surrounding his death.
Guffey and his wife, Melissa, have spent months trying to unravel the mystery surrounding their son’s death.
In the weeks after the funeral, scammers bombarded Guffey and his youngest son, Coen, 16, with Instagram messages demanding money in exchange for their son’s intimate photos. One message, sent to Guffey’s Instagram inbox on August 20, the day Gavin would have turned 18, outraged him.
“It said, ‘did I tell you your son begged for his life?’ with a smiley face emoji,” says Guffey. Law enforcement officials told him not to respond, but he says it took every ounce of strength he had to ignore it. He believes the scammers went through Gavin’s friends list on social media and messaged everyone with a similar last name, including Guffey’s nephew.
South Carolina State Representative Brandon Guffey’s bill criminalizing sextortion is awaiting the governor’s signature after passing in the state House and Senate. Courtesy of Brandon Guffey
The family did not have access to Gavin’s computer or iPad: investigators took them as part of the investigation into his death, Guffey says. She began to piece together his son’s last days using messages from scammers and information shared by investigators. She discovered that the scammers used a vanishing mode feature that deletes messages as soon as the recipient leaves the chat.
“They used these disappearing messages. So that minors feel safe in technology. What they don’t realize is that someone has another device recording that device,” she says.
Gavin had used Venmo to send the scammers $25—all the money in his account—and asked for more time.
“He was telling them he would give them more money, please don’t send these pictures…they didn’t care,” says Guffey. “I think in his mind it was too much, and he didn’t know how he would get past that.”
In an email to Trends Wide, an FBI spokesperson in Columbia, South Carolina, said no arrests have been made in the case. He declined to provide additional information, citing an ongoing investigation.
Sextortion Targets Thousands of Teens Every Year, FBI Says
Sextortion schemes occur primarily online.
In 2022, law enforcement agencies received more than 7,000 reports related to the online sextortion of minors, federal officials say. Almost half of them turned out to be victims, most of them young men. More than a dozen sextortion victims committed suicide, the FBI says.
Predators often trick their young male victims into thinking they are talking to women their own age, persuade them to send explicit photos and videos, and threaten to post those images if payment is not submitted.
Young people are more impulsive because they don’t weigh risks and consequences in the same way as adults, says Dr. Carl Fleisher, an expert in child and adolescent psychiatry, in a UCLA Health article. Their judgment and decision-making abilities are underdeveloped because the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s executive control center, isn’t fully developed until your mid-20s, says Fleisher.
Gavin Guffey loved skating and comics.
“This crime begins when young people believe they are communicating with someone their own age who is interested in a relationship…” says the FBI. “The shame, fear and confusion that children feel when caught in this cycle often prevents them from asking for help or reporting the abuse.”
On its website, the FBI reminds teens that scammers prey on their fear. He urged them to report the sextortion because they are not the ones committing a crime.
Sextortion scams have increasingly made headlines across the country. But law enforcement is fighting back.
Mark Totten, US Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, announced this month that three men will be extradited from Nigeria for allegedly extorting teenagers. One of the men will be charged with causing the death of 17-year-old Jordan DeMay, who committed suicide in March 2022 as a result of sextortion.
And in December, Los Angeles police arrested a suspect in the case of 17-year-old Ryan Last, who committed suicide in February 2022 in San Jose, California, hours after falling victim to a similar sextortion scam.
Guffey’s son was a free spirit who liked to play pranks on his father.
Guffey knows all too well the emotional toll sextortion takes on families. Nearly a year later, she is still struggling with what happened at her house that morning.
She remembers cradling her son, thinking that he had fallen and hit his head while in the bathroom. He remembers catching a glimpse of his gun on the ground and smelling the gunpowder. He says that he will never forget his pain and confusion when she realized that his son had committed suicide.
“I was a hopeless case, I didn’t know what to do,” he says. “My initial thought was, this is my fault, I left the gun out.”
Gavin loved skateboarding and art, and had bumper stickers of dinosaurs and his favorite characters, Spider-Man and Deadpool, plastered on the dashboard of his car.
On the day of his death, a package addressed to him arrived in the mail. Gavin had commissioned a banner featuring the face of rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, against a black and gold background. It had the words, “Don’t get trampled” on it.
Guffey laughs at the memory.
“Gavin constantly trolled me. I’m a pretty conservative guy and Gavin was more of a liberal kid,” she says. “But I always encourage my kids to think for themselves and be themselves. As long as they’re thinking, that’s the most important thing.”
The flag hangs in his office. He is a conversation starter who always leads to discussions about his son and the dangers that sextortion scams pose to teens.
Guffey describes sextortion as a lucrative crime that has attracted international and local con artists alike.
“If you can extort 10 teenagers who aren’t going to say anything for $100 each, and do all of that with a picture you got from a minor, it’s pretty simple,” he says. “And adolescents, every time they see that they receive that attention (from a minor), they are not necessarily thinking.”
He has a message for other teenagers: tomorrow needs you
Guffey briefly considered giving up his role as state representative to try to hunt down the scammers.
“My wife said, ‘absolutely not. You are one of the few people who have a voice that can be heard and really make a difference,” she says. “And at that moment, I had to decide: Is it more important to focus my efforts on finding the individual responsible for my son’s death? Or is it more important to spread the message and prevent another family from having to feel this pain?
He has made the latter an important part of his legislative platform. He has the latest message from his son tattooed on his left arm. Every time his fellow legislators signed his bill, he gave them a lapel pin with a similar symbol.
Gavin Guffey’s friends spray-painted a rock at his favorite skate park with images of a dinosaur, the <3 symbol, and his nickname, Goop. Courtesy of Brandon Guffey
On days when Guffey needed a boost of strength, he’d slip into Gavin’s white Vans. His sneakers, scribbled with black lines and a Spider-Man scribble, made him feel like he could handle anything.
“I feel like he (Gavin) would want me to try to save more kids from having to feel the way he felt at the time,” he says.
Guffey’s goal, he says, is to make sextortion scammers think twice before attacking children in South Carolina.
At Gavin’s funeral, his friends put stickers of their favorite comic book characters on his coffin. They also went to his favorite skate park and spray-painted a rock with a dinosaur and the <3 symbol, along with a message to other young people: “Tomorrow needs you.”
Guffey says she hopes teens will remember that message whenever they face challenges.
How to get help
Call 1-800-273-8255 in the United States to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Provides free and confidential assistance 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for people in suicidal or distressed crises. You can learn more about their services here, including their guide on what to do if you see suicidal signs on social media. You can also call 1-800-273-8255 to talk to someone about how you can help someone in crisis. Call 1-866-488-7386 for TrevorLifeline, a suicide prevention counseling service for the LGBTQ community.
For assistance outside the US, the International Association for Suicide Prevention provides a global directory of international resources and hotlines. You can also turn to Befrienders Worldwide.
Look here the websites and help lines that can be used in most Latin American countries and Spain.
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