LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — Richard Anthony Reyna Densmore, 47, of Kaleva, will spend 30 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to sexually exploiting a child, one charge in a broader indictment that charged him with other child exploitation crimes as a member of 764, an international group that targets vulnerable children online.
Densmore is among the first individuals associated with 764 to face legal consequences for their actions.
“These groups, 764 being one of them, have a political ideology. They are often operating based on trying to further their status among members, to increase their notoriety,” said U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten. “Of course, there is the element of sadism that we have seen in this case.”
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 764 is a “terror network” of violent individuals worldwide who attempt to “normalize” child pornography and gore media to “desensitize and corrupt youth toward future acts of violence.” Members of 764 systematically target, groom, and extort children via online social media platforms, demanding that these victims share media of themselves committing self-mutilation, sexual acts, harm to animals, acts of violence suicide, and murder—creating a continuous cycle of abuse.
This media, the U.S. Department of Justice says, is made for “accelerating chaos and disrupting society and the world order,” including the United States Government.
Densmore, known online as “Rabid,” created a community on the online social platform Discord called “Sewer” where members—often by infiltrating online gaming sites frequented by children—recruited children to harm themselves and engage in graphic sexual acts.
He would boost membership in the community by going into other Discord servers and advertising live streams of children harming themselves (“cutshows”) or participating in graphic sexual activity (“on cam”), and creating multiple separate communities to “evade detection” as the platform would “keep shutting them down.”
Densmore also advertised the use of the platform Telegram, reportedly saying in the Discord community that “you can get away with more” on Telegram.
Court documents say Densmore, a military veteran who was unemployed and sustained primarily off of government assistance at the time, “treated the victimization, exploitation, and desensitization as his vocation.” He described himself as “desensitized,” and was wholly devoted to 764 to “gain notoriety within a network of individuals who seek to destabilize society, cause social unrest, and accelerate the downfall of the world order.”
Densmore would use this material to threaten victims to participate, possessing child pornography and bloody images of “Rabid,” “Sewer,” and “764” carved into victims’ limbs referred to as “fansigns”, in some cases with razor blades and boxcutters nearby.
A woman who allegedly lied about having a doctorate in psychology and used false credentials to testify in court on child custody cases was indicted by a state grand jury on 15 criminal counts.
Shannon McShane, 57, is facing eight counts of attempt to influence a public servant, five counts of forgery, one count of perjury and one count of retaliation against a victim or witness. The indictment against McShane was filed on Aug. 29 in Denver District Court by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. She is in custody at the Denver Downtown Detention Center.