iStock.com/Kenneth Cheung

Let’s face it, in the year 2024, everyone has some form of social media. Whether that be Instagram, Snapchat, or even messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, almost everyone has some form of connection with others, via the online world.

This can be a beautiful thing; having a platform to post photos from your most recent beach trip, or being able to send grandma an adorable photo of your cat. The internet is what connects us, but with that ability, comes the forces that misuse it.

Group “764” is a perverted collection of the internet’s most deranged individuals. Meeting mainly via the gaming-communication platform, Discord. The group consists of people from various age groups and locations. The one thing they have in common is their collective goal: to harm as many people as possible.

Manipulation, gaslighting, extortion, blackmailing. These are all terms that members of group 764 know all too well. Using the widespread use of the internet, they lurk in online games such as Roblox and Minecraft. They lure impressionable minors into messaging privately with them via Discord, or sometimes the messaging app Telegram. 

In January of 2021, a 15 year old named Bradley Cadenhead created the first known 764 server out of where he lived in Stephenville, Texas. In the years following, members of what has now been identified as a cult, harmed many innocent children in every way possible: mentally, emotionally and physically. The FBI has also brought attention through a Public Service Announcement to the danger of groups such as 764, along with others going by different names, but with the same ill intentions.

Children are most impressionable around the ages of seven, up until their eighteenth birthdays. That leaves a wide time range for these adult manipulators to use their power imbalance in favor of exploitation. Group 764 reportedly targets minors from ages eight to seventeen, gaining trust from the younger party in order to get what they want. They pressure the child into sending explicit photographs and content of themselves, then using this as blackmail material, threatening to post and send the content to the children’s families and schoolmates. 

They use the content they obtain to further extort their victims into doing heinous acts, harming not only themselves, but others as well. These acts include: self-inflicted abuse, as well as inflicting harm to animals, performing what can only be defined as satanic rituals, and many others. 

These crimes can easily be contained within the chat rooms or servers these criminals use to converse with their victims, no other eyes, including those of law enforcement and concerned parents, being able to view the monstrous conversations. However these crimes are further spread into the world when victims are pressured into committing crimes outside of their online existence. 

According to the public press release from the Vernon, Connecticut Police Department, a 17-year old was arrested in connection with bombing and “swatting” threats. These threats were made to both local public schools and places of worship, including threats to locations in Manchester. It was further discovered that the teen was involved with 764, however it is unclear whether or not this juvenile was a victim of 764, as well as a perpetrator of these crimes. When reaching out to the Vernon Police Department, they were unable to provide a comment at this time.

Unfortunately, while it’s most common for these individuals to stay behind their online usernames, there have been cases where the abuse leaves the platform it started on. This can be noted in the case of Kaleb Merritt, an individual who was believed to be involved with 764. Merritt, 21-years-old at the time, was arrested in 2021 after abducting the 12-year-old Virginian girl he was communicating with through social media. Luckily, the girl was found alive, but not safe from the trauma inflicted upon her, the trauma she will be forced to carry for the rest of her life.

There is no way to fully shield children from the horrors that lurk beneath the surface of the internet, however there are ways to help protect them. Look for changes in appearance (including long sleeves and pants in abnormal weather), wounds (such as bruises and cuts), and suspicious packages (as it has been reported of online group members sending packages to their victims.) 

Most importantly, monitoring what children and teens are consuming and interacting with on the internet is the most crucial way to ensure that young people aren’t being taken advantage of.
If you or someone you know is a victim of one of these crimes, please contact local authorities. For additional help in the removal of explicit photographs from public platforms, you can visit https://takeitdown.ncmec.org/