A twisted neo-Nazi sextortion ring that targets youngsters as younger as 9 and blackmails them into making sick photographs and movies is spreading to each nook of the USA — and the FBI has ideas for fogeys on methods to spot if their youngsters are being groomed.
The Bureau has a whole lot of open instances towards the group often called “764” – a cult-like community with ties to neo-Nazis and Satanism whose members “methodically goal and exploit minors” after contacting them on gaming chatrooms, social media and telephone apps.
764 is the biggest community — with 250 energetic instances, at the very least one in each single FBI discipline workplace, ABC Information reported.
However there are others, as properly.
“These networks use threats, blackmail, and manipulation to coerce or extort victims into producing, sharing, or live-streaming acts of self-harm, animal cruelty, sexually express acts, and/or suicide,” the FBI mentioned Tuesday in a public service announcement.
Members then flow into the disgusting photographs and movies amongst themselves and threaten to submit them publicly to maintain their victims beneath management.
Some warnings indicators might be related to common teenage angst — whereas others are extra disturbing. Right here’s what the FBI is warning dad and mom to be careful for.
- Children participating in self-harm or expressing suicidal ideas
- Instantly changing into extra withdrawn and moody
- Sudden modifications in consuming, sleeping and dressing habits
- Pets being harmed or dying beneath mysterious circumstances
- Children mutilating themselves by carving phrases or symbols into their pores and skin
- Writing in blood, or something that appears like blood
The 764 cult is an outgrowth of an older, bigger group often called the Order of 9 Angles, which has ties to neo-Nazism and Satanism.
Its founder, Bradley Cadenhead, was simply 15 when he fashioned the group in 2020, naming it after a part of his personal zip code.
The FBI has described them as “nihilistic violent extremists … in search of to destroy civilized society,” but their precise ideology appears to be in every single place.
“Some menace actors could also be participating in prison exercise solely for sexual gratification, social standing, or a way of belonging, or for a mixture of different causes that is probably not ideologically motivated,” the company mentioned.
The widespread focusing on of youngsters have turn out to be an enormous focus for cops who give attention to on-line exercise, Rebecca Weiner, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism, advised The Publish.
Weiner mentioned the variety of energetic instances will solely rise as arrests and the seizures of computer systems and telephones present officers with extra leads on the actions of those demented predators.
Final yr, police in Vernon, Connecticut, arrested a 17-year-old woman for allegedly calling in bomb threats and “swatting” pranks towards colleges and locations of worship, NBC Connecticut reported.
Investigators found photographs of her posing nude, mutilating herself, and a shot of a nude Barbie doll with “764” written on its face.
Authorities arrested two suspected 764 members final month: Prasan Nepa Leonidas Varagiannis, a.ok.a. “Warfare,” 21, and Prasan Nepal, a.ok.a. “Trippy,” 20.
The pair are accused of focusing on youngsters as younger as 13 years previous on-line, intimidating them into making express movies.
“This content material consists of ‘reduce indicators’ and ‘blood indicators’ by way of which younger ladies would reduce symbols into their our bodies,” the FBI mentioned in a press release.
