In shocking and chilling terms, several career Justice Department officials on Thursday offered dire warnings about the online extremist network “764,” whose young followers around the world use popular social media platforms to attack, groom and pressure vulnerable teenagers to harm themselves and others.
“I don’t think Stephen King is dark enough to come up with some of the things these kids come up with,” said Justin Sher, a trial attorney for the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
“It’s as serious a threat as you can imagine,” said James Donnelly, Sher’s colleague at the Justice Department. “[And] “They are trying to metastasize the evil.”
His comments came during a panel on 764 hosted by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. It was a rare public appearance by two career prosecutors whom the panel’s moderator described as “the key people” at 764 within the department’s National Security Division.
Sher and Donnelly noted that 764 members are increasingly trying to pressure victims into taking deadly actions, including suicides or school shootings and other mass casualty attacks.
As ABC News previously reported, 764 members find vulnerable victims on popular online platforms, obtain private information and intimate sexual images from them, and then use that sensitive material to threaten and blackmail the victims into mutilating themselves, harming others, or taking other violent actions, all while broadcasting it on social media so others can see it and then spread their recordings.
“For them, content is currency,” Sher said. “So they’re building their inventory of content… and disseminating it to build their status within these groups.”
An undated photo found by Vernon, Connecticut, police on the devices of a 17-year-old girl associated with the 764 online network shows a Barbie doll marked “764.”
Vernon Police Department
While anyone can be targeted, 764 members often “systematically target underage women,” especially those already struggling with depression, eating disorders or other mental health issues, according to an FBI agent’s description of 764 in charging documents from a recent case in Tennessee.
“[764] Actors often groom their victims by first establishing a romantic or trusting relationship before ultimately manipulating and coercing them,” the agent wrote. “Extremists control their victims by generating immense fear,” and do so simply “for the network’s entertainment or for the threat actor’s own sense of fame,” the agent said.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says it received more than 2,000 reports of abuse linked to 764 or similar networks in the first nine months of this year, double the reports it received last year.
In the Tennessee case, during the summer of last year, Cayden Newberry, 19, of Johnson City, and others associated with 764 allegedly forced a 13-year-old girl from Raritan, New Jersey, hundreds of miles away, to carve their initials into her leg and then send them photographs and videos. The young victim later learned that many of them shared the content with the so-called “boss” of a group related to 764 on Discord in order to be admitted to the group, charging documents allege.
At one point, Newberry allegedly used DoorDash to purchase a cell phone at Target and then deliver it to the girl’s home “so they could communicate exclusively and discreetly,” according to charging documents.
Newberry was first arrested last month and indicted last week on two counts related to child exploitation.
During Thursday’s panel, Sher explained that many members of 764 and similar networks have a particularly concerning target, which is why the Department of Justice’s National Security Division and the FBI are now paying so much attention to 764.
“Their goal is… to bring about the downfall of society, to bring about the downfall of the United States government,” Sher said of 764 and similar networks. “They want a Darwinian society, one that is survival of the fittest.”
The FBI is investigating more than 350 people across the United States with alleged ties to 764 or similar networks. And the Justice Department has already publicly charged at least 37 such people in recent years, including Newberry.
According to authorities, his victims were only nine years old.
Career Justice Department officials who participated in Thursday’s panel agreed that current U.S. law can make it difficult to prosecute 764 related cases.
“Forcing a minor to self-injure or harm another is not necessarily easily criminalized,” said Steve Grocki, chief of the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. “It’s challenging to a certain extent.”
But he said federal prosecutors are trying to “be creative” and find ways to use existing laws, even as some in Congress are trying to pass new laws that would address the specific conduct of online extremist networks like 764.
Kavitha Babu, an assistant U.S. attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, also noted that federal prosecutors “often” hesitate to prosecute minors, which presents a challenge in addressing 764 since so many minors are being victimized by other minors. But she said she and other prosecutors are now “taking a closer look” at whether federal charges could be warranted in cases involving minors.
Thursday’s panel was held just hours before a 19-year-old San Antonio, Texas, man admitted in federal court that, through his actions with 764, he participated in a criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy.
According to documents filed in court, Alexis Aldair Chávez began consuming violent content related to 764 on the online platforms Discord and Telegram in 2022, and eventually “earned the right” to talk to other 764 members by “killing his cat, recording the murder, and posting it.” [online] for others to see.”
Over the next almost two years, he allegedly groomed several young women around the world for extortion and self-mutilation. He allegedly pushed a young woman to set her arm on fire during a recorded video call and forced another young woman to create an 18-minute video that showed her harming herself in horrific and sexually explicit ways, including with a dead rat that had been in a jar, suspended in a solution.
The video showed her “screaming in pain as the dead rat solution burned her,” according to court documents.
As of June 2024, Chávez was allegedly acting as administrator of several 764 online subsidiaries. He was arrested in October 2024 and pleaded guilty Thursday night to one count of participating in a racketeering conspiracy, one count of distribution of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.
764 was first released by a 15-year-old in Texas, Bradley Cadenhead, who named it after the first three digits of his zip code. Since then, 764 has spread around the world, becoming more of an ideology than a singular group, experts say. And other groups, inspired by 764, have formed with different names but identical tactics and objectives.
“764 is kind of a big brand. And if content is indeed its currency, 764 has the biggest war chest,” Sher said.
