🚨There Are Dark Corners of the Internet… Then There's 764 = 17

A global network of violent predators is hiding in plain sight, targeting children on major platforms, grooming them, and extorting them to commit horrific acts of abuse.

A reporting consortium including Der Spiegel, Recorder, The Washington Post, and WIRED has unearthed a sprawling ecosystem that has targeted thousands of people and victimized dozens, if not hundreds, of children using some of the internet’s biggest platforms. Law enforcement believes the “com” network encompasses a swath of interlocking groups with thousands of users, including hundreds of hardcore members who victimize children through coordinated online campaigns of extortion, doxing, swatting, and harassment.

This reporting consortium has obtained and analyzed more than 3 million messages from more than 50 chat groups on Discord and Telegram. The messages expose multiple com subgroups and thousands of users in nearly a dozen countries on three continents. Our investigation found ample evidence of predatory conduct and a persistent presence across apps including Telegram and Discord, while WIRED also found com activity on Instagram, SoundCloud, and Roblox. The platforms are aware of these groups, but they have yet to successfully eradicate them.

The abuse perpetrated by members of com groups is extreme. They have coerced children into sexual abuse or self-harm, causing them to deeply lacerate their bodies to carve “cutsigns” of an abuser’s online alias into their skin. Victims have flushed their heads in toilets, attacked their siblings, killed their pets, and in some extreme instances, attempted or died by suicide. Court records from the United States and European nations reveal participants in this network have also been accused of robberies, in-person sexual abuse of minors, kidnapping, weapons violations, swatting, and murder.

Some members of the network extort children for sexual pleasure, some for power and control. Some do it merely for the kick that comes from manipulation. Others sell the explicit CSAM content produced by extortion on the dark web.

“Their main aim is to traumatize you,” says Anna, a young woman groomed and victimized by 764, one of the most notorious groups under the com umbrella. “They want to make you suffer. And for you to take your own life. They really are very sadistic people.”

The nonprofit National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received hundreds of reports of minors extorted into hurting themselves in 2023, says NCMEC’s CyberTipline director Fallon McNulty, a sharp rise over previous years. The organization, which routes reports from social media companies and the public to law enforcement, still receives dozens each month, she says.

“From 2022 into last year, especially, the scale of what's coming through seems like it's continuing to grow,” McNulty says, adding that in 2022 NCMEC only saw “a handful” of such extortion reports.

These online groups, she says, are responsible for “some of the most egregious online enticement reports that we’re seeing in terms of what these children are being coerced to do.”

The FBI issued a formal warning about the broader com network in September 2023 but did not answer specific questions regarding its investigations into the com/764 extortion network.
Since mid-2021, investigators have launched criminal cases against more than a dozen people linked to com groups in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Romania, and Brazil.

The US Department of Justice is pursuing further charges through federal grand jury proceedings. The com network is also connected to a nihilist Eastern European skinhead crew whose members are accused of a series of random attacks and killings in Ukraine and Russia.
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US prosecutors have cited Telegram and Discord as the primary means by which members of 764 operate. The group used these platforms “to desensitize vulnerable populations through sharing extreme gore and child sexual abuse material,” prosecutors wrote in a criminal case against Kalana Limkin, an alleged 764 member charged in Hawaii with the distribution of child sexual abuse material.

“Child abuse and calls to violence are explicitly forbidden by Telegram’s terms of service,” says a Telegram spokesperson. “Telegram has moderated harmful content on our platform since its creation.” As of this writing, dozens of Telegram channels used by the extortion network remain active.

Discord says it has worked to shut down com activities on its platform for more than two years. A spokesperson for Discord, who asked not to be named for their own safety, says dismantling the group is a top priority, highlighting the company’s close working relationship with the FBI and other law enforcement. In 2023 alone, the company says, Discord blocked 130 groups and 34,000 accounts linked to 764.

Instagram accounts linked to the extortion network are still active, despite parent company Meta implementing bans on com- and 764-related accounts. SoundCloud hosted self-harm and Satanism-related playlists, which remain online as of this writing. “We strictly prohibit any content that includes or suggests child sexual abuse or grooming on our platform and uses a combination of human moderation and technological tools to identify and remove infringing content,” a SoundCloud spokesperson says.

On Roblox, user-created skins for 764-themed characters with the group’s insignia and open references to CSAM were abundantly available. Roblox spokesperson Juliet Chaitin-Lefcourt tells WIRED the company is aware of the com network, works proactively to find and ban such content, and is in constant conversation with law enforcement and other platforms. “We take the safety of our users incredibly seriously, especially given our users include young children,” she says.
Minecraft, where 764 members are known to be active, has a “variety of systems” for removing harmful content from its official servers, including “chat filtering, in-game reporting, parental controls,” and has “dedicated teams for review and moderation,” according to a spokesperson for Microsoft, which owns Minecraft’s development studio. “On private servers that are unmanaged by Minecraft, we will take action to investigate reported violations and apply enforcement mechanisms as needed.”

The network’s members, however, have shown enough technical proficiency to evade whatever measures platforms take to ban them.
The FBI and other foreign law enforcement agencies are investigating 764 for both CSAM offenses and terrorism because of a connection to Order of Nine Angles, a once-obscure Satanist cult from Great Britain that has become ever-present in online “edge lord” and militant neo-Nazi circles over the past decade.

Swastikas, Nazi memes, and accelerationist propaganda glorifying homicidal members of white supremacist groups like the Atomwaffen Division frequently appear in the extortion group’s Telegram channels. While many users appear unfamiliar with O9A dogma, the sect’s symbols, texts, and aesthetic have been widely co-opted within the group for shock value. The practice of urging victims to injure themselves with “cutsigns” also bears a striking resemblance to O9A rituals.
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