What is 764 group? Investigations increasing into violent online 764 network targeting minors
The 764 network operates not only in the United States but all over the world using threats, blackmail, and perverse manipulation to groom children for violence and pain. Members force young people to perform depraved acts against themselves and others.
"When we started seeing these reports concerning online enticement, but with extremely egregious sadistic elements our team immediately knew this was an outside of the norm and began tracking this trend specifically," said Fallon McNulty. She is the executive director of the CyberTipline at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
McNulty says members of 764 start to groom their victims on seemingly innocuous platforms and blackmail them into producing sexually explicit material, harming themselves, or even other children.
"Offenders are first making contact with children through online gaming platforms or through social media and then trying to move children to more private or encrypted messaging spaces," McNulty told the I-Team.
The more debased and violent the image or video a member is able to coerce a child to produce, the higher their standing in 764.
"They're striking up communication or chat in gaming, they are trying to seek what that child's interests are, what that child's vulnerabilities are, their personal information, and then they're using that against the child," warned McNulty.
SEE ALSO | '10 minutes of murder': Why one family is speaking out about the online extremist network 764
The FBI is now comparing 764 actions to those of terrorist organizations.
"Lots of commonalities with other types of terrorist activity," said Javed Ali, an associate professor at the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy.
Ali worked at the FBI and National Security Council during the Trump Administration.
"All this activity that is just so reprehensible. What's to say that they wouldn't go to another level and try to commit an act of terrorism, even though it may not be part of the origin, origins, or the initial ideals of what the 764 network tries to do," said Ali.
But there are real challenges to dismantling a network that exists all over the world and primarily online.
"How do you, either from a parenting side, or from a national security perspective, how do you get your arms around it? Because it is so vast, and it's so unregulated for the most part," Ali told the I-Team.
Additional resources:
To report an incident to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children CyberTipline: https://report.cybertip.org/
For more resources on child sexual exploitation, including how to talk to your child about this topic: https://report.cybertip.org/other-resources
To report an incident of child exploitation to the FBI: https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/victim-services/cenp
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