DOJ Warns Public About '764' Online Extremist Network

The Department of Justice has sent a warning to the public about the online extremist network known as "764," ABC News reported.

The group, started online in 2021 by a teenager in Texas, takes its name from his ZIP code and has since grown into a decentralized, globally active network that mixes violent extremism with disturbing online predation.

764 is designated by the Department of Justice as a violent extremist network and by the FBI as a "tier one" investigative priority — one of the most serious domestic terrorist threats law enforcement is tracking.

It operates primarily online to reach people around the world, using gaming platforms, chat apps such as Discord and Telegram, and social media.

Members groom and manipulate vulnerable minors (often between ages 8 and 17), coercing them into creating sexually explicit material, inflicting self-harm, committing violence, and participating in other degrading acts.

The network also embraces nihilistic, misanthropic themes and borrows imagery or symbolism associated with neo-Nazi or satanic subcultures, though authorities say the behavior is more about sadistic thrill-seeking than coherent ideology.

"Sometimes I find myself saying, 'I don't think Stephen King is dark enough to come up with some of the stuff that these kids are coming up with,'" Justin Sher, a trial attorney in the DOJ's National Security Division, said Thursday at a panel discussion on 764 held by George Washington University.

"There are times when it's appropriate for the federal government to charge a juvenile," but that depends on a number of factors including age, what conduct the person is engaging in, and whether there is an applicable charge that satisfies the hurdles the federal government must overcome to file a charge, he added.

Law enforcement has charged dozens of alleged members and associates of the extremist 764 network around the world, with cases spanning the U.S., Canada, Europe, and beyond — including leaders such as Prasan "Trippy" Nepal and Leonidas "War" Varagiannis, who were federally indicted in Washington on charges of running a global child exploitation enterprise.

Federal prosecutors and local authorities have also charged nearly 30 people in the U.S. alone with crimes linked to the network, prosecutors say, and the FBI reports it has opened investigations of more than 350 people with possible ties to 764-style crimes.

The cases include child sexual exploitation, possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material, grooming and extortion of minors, and, in some jurisdictions, terrorism and weapons-related charges, a scope that reflects both the network's global reach and law enforcement's broad effort to dismantle it.

"It is as serious a threat as you can imagine because of the ubiquitous nature of the internet. It could be anywhere at any time, affecting anybody, and I think what we're seeing is ... this is to further this accelerationist ideology and we know the evidence that's out there ... is leading us to the conclusion that what this is that they're trying to metastasize the evil," said Sher's colleague James Donnelly, the DOJ's domestic terrorism coordinator.

"They're trying to get that evil into a place where it's just generating and kind of propagating itself out through the internet to affect people in a way that's going to collapse society on itself.

"And so when they get that out there in the same way that ISIS has now kind of morphed into a group that is looking to take advantage of the internet."

Donnelly added: "They're reaching out hoping to get that vulnerable person to do an act on their behalf.

"That's the same thing that you're seeing with these groups now … they're pulling in as many people as they can, desensitizing them to the evil and horrific stuff that comes from CSAM [child sex abuse material] and then the cutting and then getting them to do the next step of evil which is going to further propagate the goal of bringing society down.

"So the threat is real. The threat is really insidious because it is everywhere, and the threat is impossible to pick out unless you are very carefully looking at the people that are really vulnerable to the harm."