News Investigation

Father Tells of Unimaginable Loss After a 30-Minute Online Conversation Led a Teen to Take His Own Life in Sextortion Tragedy

Sep 2025 🇦🇺 7NEWS.com.au

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In this 7NEWS.com.au feature, reporter Malin Hagglund reconstructs the sextortion scam that targeted 16-year-old Mac Holdsworth in 2022 and its aftermath, drawing on an interview with his father, Wayne. The piece describes how a man posing online as a young woman obtained an intimate image from Mac, then threatened to distribute it unless paid, and how Wayne involved Victoria Police after his son disclosed what was happening. It reports that police identified a suspect within three days via the bank account used, but that the image had already been shared with Mac's contacts by then. The article accompanies a 7NEWS Spectrum podcast episode on the case. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as investigative reporting, independent of SmackTalk, documenting the sextortion case underlying Holdsworth's advocacy, describing events factually rather than attributing Mac's later death to any single cause.

3 days

Time Victoria Police took to identify a suspect via the bank account used in the scam, per this 7NEWS report.

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CITATION

Hagglund, Malin. "Father Tells of Unimaginable Loss After a 30-Minute Online Conversation Led a Teen to Take His Own Life in Sextortion Tragedy." 7NEWS.com.au, Sept. 7, 2025. https://7news.com.au/podcasts/father-tells-of-unimaginable-loss-after-a-30-minute-online-conversation-led-a-teen-to-take-his-own-life-in-sextortion-tragedy-c-19764682

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