In hanging and chilling phrases, a number of profession Justice Division officers on Thursday supplied dire warnings concerning the on-line extremist community “764,” whose younger followers world wide use well-liked social media platforms to focus on, groom and push susceptible teenagers into harming themselves and others.
“I do not assume Stephen King is darkish sufficient to provide you with among the stuff that these children are developing with,” stated Justin Sher, a trial legal professional with the Justice Division’s Nationwide Safety Division.
“It’s as critical a menace as you possibly can think about,” Sher’s Justice Division colleague James Donnelly stated. “[And] they’re making an attempt to metastasize the evil.”
Their feedback got here throughout a panel about 764 hosted by George Washington College’s Program on Extremism. It was a uncommon public look for 2 profession prosecutors who the panel’s moderator described as “the purpose folks” on 764 throughout the division’s Nationwide Safety Division.
Sher and Donnelly each famous that 764 members are more and more making an attempt to push victims to take lethal actions, together with suicide or college shootings and different mass-casualty assaults.
As ABC Information has beforehand reported, 764 members discover susceptible victims on well-liked on-line platforms, elicit personal data and intimate sexual pictures from them, after which use that delicate materials to threaten and blackmail victims into mutilating themselves, harming others, or taking different violent motion — all whereas streaming it on social media so others can watch after which disseminate recordings of it.
“For them, content material is foreign money,” Sher stated. “So they’re constructing their content material stock … and placing it on the market to construct their standing inside these teams.”
An undated picture discovered by Vernon, Connecticut, police on the units of a 17-year-old woman related to the net community 764 reveals a Barbie Doll marked with “764.”
Vernon Police Division
Whereas anybody may be focused, 764 members typically “systematically goal underage females,” particularly these already battling melancholy, consuming problems or different psychological well being points, in response to an FBI agent’s description of 764 in charging paperwork from a latest case in Tennessee.
“[764] actors typically groom their victims by first establishing a trusting or romantic relationship earlier than ultimately manipulating and coercing them,” the agent wrote. “Extremists management their victims by constructing immense concern,” and so they do it merely “for the community’s leisure or menace actor’s personal sense of fame,” the agent stated.
The Nationwide Heart for Lacking and Exploited Youngsters says it obtained greater than 2,000 studies of abuse tied to 764 or related networks within the first 9 months of this yr — double the variety of studies it obtained final yr.
Within the Tennessee case, in the course of the summer season of final yr, 19-year-old Cayden Newberry of Johnson Metropolis and others related to 764 allegedly compelled a 13-year-old woman from Raritan, New Jersey — tons of of miles away — to carve their initials into her leg after which ship photos and movies of it to them. The younger sufferer later realized that a lot of them shared the content material with the so-called “boss” of a 764-related group on Discord so that they could possibly be admitted into the group, charging paperwork allege.
At one level, Newberry allegedly used DoorDash to have a mobile phone bought at Goal after which delivered to the woman’s dwelling “so they might completely and discreetly talk,” in response to the charging paperwork.
Newberry was first arrested final month and indicted final week on two counts associated to youngster exploitation.
Throughout Thursday’s panel, Sher defined that many members of 764 and related networks have a very regarding objective — which is why the Justice Division’s Nationwide Safety Division and FBI at the moment are paying such shut consideration to 764.
“Their goal is … to trigger the downfall of society, trigger the downfall of the U.S. authorities,” Sher stated of 764 and related networks. “They need a Darwinian society, they need one that’s survival of the fittest.”
The FBI is investigating greater than 350 folks throughout the USA with suspected ties to 764 or related networks. And the Justice Division has already publicly charged not less than 37 such folks lately, together with Newberry.
Their victims have been as younger as 9 years previous, in response to authorities.
Profession Justice Division officers on Thursday’s panel agreed that present U.S. legislation could make it more durable to prosecute 764-related instances.
“Coercing a minor to interact in self-harm or to hurt one other just isn’t essentially criminalized in a simple method,” stated Steve Grocki, the chief of the Justice Division’s Little one Exploitation and Obscenity Part. “It’s difficult to some extent.”
However he stated federal prosecutors attempt to “be inventive” and discover methods to make use of present legal guidelines, at the same time as some in Congress try to cross new legal guidelines that might handle the precise conduct of on-line extremist networks like 764.
An assistant U.S. legal professional with the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, Kavitha Babu, additionally famous that federal prosecutors are “typically” hesitant to prosecute minors, which presents a problem to taking over 764 since so many minors are being victimized by fellow minors. However she stated that she and different prosecutors at the moment are “taking a more durable look” at whether or not federal expenses may be warranted in instances involving minors.
Thursday’s panel was held simply hours earlier than a 19-year-old man from San Antonio, Texas, admitted in federal court docket that, by his actions with 764, he took half in a felony enterprise and racketeering conspiracy.
In line with paperwork filed in court docket, Alexis Aldair Chavez started consuming violent 764-related content material on the net platforms Discord and Telegram in 2022, and he ultimately “earned the correct” to talk with different 764 members “by killing his cat, recording the killing, and posting it [online] for others to see.”
Over the following almost two years, he allegedly groomed a number of younger ladies world wide for extortion and self-mutilation. He allegedly pushed one younger woman to mild her arm on hearth throughout a recorded video name and compelled one other younger woman to create an 18-minute video that confirmed her harming herself in horrific and sexually-explicit methods, together with with a useless rat that had been in a jar, suspended in answer.
The video confirmed her “crying out in ache as the answer on the useless rat burned” her, in response to court docket paperwork.
By June 2024, Chavez was allegedly performing as an administrator for numerous 764 subsidiaries on-line. He was arrested in October 2024, and pleaded responsible late Thursday to 1 rely of collaborating in a racketeering conspiracy, one rely of distributing youngster pornography, and one rely of possessing youngster pornography.
764 was first launched by a 15-year-old in Texas, Bradley Cadenhead, who named it after the primary three digits of his ZIP code. Since then, 764 has unfold world wide, rising into extra of an ideology than a singular group, consultants say. And different teams, impressed by 764, have fashioned with totally different names however an identical techniques and objectives.
“764 is type of the massive model title. And if content material is in reality their foreign money, 764 has the largest warfare chest,” Sher stated.
