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(WASHINGTON) — FBI officials say they are growing increasingly concerned about a loose network of violent predators who befriend teenagers through popular online platforms and then coerce them into escalating sexual and violent behavior — pushing victims to create graphic pornography, harm family pets, cut themselves with sharp objects, or even die by suicide.

The online predators, part of the network known as “764,” demand victims send them photos and videos of it all, so the shocking content can be shared with fellow 764 followers or used to extort victims for more. Some of the predators even host “watch parties” for others to watch them torment victims live online, according to authorities.

“We see a lot of bad things, but this is one of the most disturbing things we’re seeing,” said FBI Assistant Director David Scott, the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, which is now leading many of the U.S. government’s investigations tied to 764.

The FBI has more than 250 such investigations currently underway, with every single one of its 55 field offices across the country handling a 764-related case, Scott told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

He said the FBI has seen some victims as young as nine, and federal authorities have indicated there could be thousands of victims around the world.

‘Nihilistic violent extremists’

“[It’s] very scary and frightening,” the Connecticut mother of a teen girl caught up in 764 told ABC News.

“It was very difficult to process, because we didn’t raise her to engage in that kind of activity,” said the mother, speaking on the condition that ABC News not name her or her daughter.

Last year, in classic New England town of Vernon, Connecticut, local police arrested the girl — a former honor roll student — for conspiring with a 764 devotee overseas to direct bomb threats at her own community. When police searched her devices, they found pornographic photos of her, photos depicting self-mutilation, and photos of her paying homage to 764.

As Scott described it, one of the main goals of 764 and similar networks is to “sow chaos” and “bring down society.”

That’s why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and the Justice Department’s National Security Division are now looking at 764 and its offshoots as a potential form of domestic terrorism, even coining a new term to characterize the most heinous actors: “nihilistic violent extremists.”

“The more gore, the more violence … that raises their stature within the groups,” Scott said. “So it’s sort of a badge of honor within some of these groups to actually do the most harm to victims.”

According to an ABC News review of cases across the country, over the past few years, state and federal authorities have arrested at least 15 people on child pornography or weapons-related charges, and accused them in court of being associated with 764.

In one of those federal cases, a 24-year-old Arkansas man, Jairo Tinajero, plotted to murder a 14-year-old girl who started resisting his demands. When he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and child pornography charges three months ago, Tinajero said he believed the murder would raise his stature within the 764 network. His sentencing is set for August.

In another federal case, 19-year-old Jack Rocker of Tampa amassed a collection of more than 8,300 videos and images that the Justice Department called “some of the most horrific, evil content available on the Internet.” He pleaded guilty in January to possessing child sexual abuse material and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

While amassing his collection, Rocker organized his digital content into folders with titles such as “764” and “kkk-racist.” Another folder, called “trophies,” contained photos of victims who carved his online monikers into their bodies — a form of self-mutilation known as “fan signing.” He also had a folder titled “ISIS,” referring to the international terrorist organization that produced barbaric beheading videos.

Followers of the 764 network share all sorts of violent content with their victims, while some also glorify past mass-casualty attacks such as the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, or introduce victims to other extreme ideologies like neo-Nazism or Satanism, according to authorities.

“They want to desensitize these young people so that nothing really disturbs them anymore,” Scott said.

Just two weeks ago, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a 20-year-old North Carolina man, Prasan Nepal, for allegedly operating an elite online club dedicated to promoting 764, extorting young victims, and producing horrific content. He has yet to be arraigned.

In charging documents, the Justice Department said Nepal helped launch 764 with its Texas-based founder more than four years ago.

Though charging documents don’t identify the founder by name, federal law enforcement sources identified him to ABC News as Bradley Cadenhead, who is serving an 80-year-prison sentence in Texas after pleading guilty to several child pornography-related charges in 2023.

According to court documents, Cadenhead launched his new online community on the social platform Discord and called it “764” because at the time — when he was 15 — he lived in Stephenville, Texas, where the ZIP code begins with the numbers 764.

‘It’s everywhere’

Since the launch of the initial 764 group, which garnered a couple of hundred Discord followers, 764 has become a global movement, with an array of offshoots and subgroups that often rebrand and change their names to help keep social media companies and law enforcement from tracking them.

The original 764 was itself an offshoot of previous extremist and gore-focused groups online.

“Think of this less as a group, and think of it more as an ideology,” Vernon police detective Tommy Van Tasel said of 764 and similar networks. “It doesn’t matter what they’re called. There are a lot of actors out there … encouraging this type of behavior. So it’s everywhere. It’s in every community.”

Indeed, the young Connecticut girl that Van Tasel would eventually investigate was sucked into 764 by a man overseas.

Reflecting what her family described as a typical 764-related encounter, the girl met him on the popular online gaming platform Roblox, and then they began communicating more regularly online, including on Discord, which caters to gamers.

The man convinced her he was her boyfriend, and she sent him sexual photos of herself — the types of images that 764 adherents threaten to share widely if victims don’t comply with their escalating demands.

According to police, she had produced an assortment of 764-related content, including a photo of a nude Barbie doll marked with “764” on its forehead; photos depicting her cutting herself; and a note, written in her blood, calling her supposed boyfriend “a god.”

“They felt like they owned her,” the girl’s mother said.

And, fearing even further extortion, the girl began participating in some of the same threatening behavior that she had endured herself, according to Van Tasel.

Scott said it’s common to “have victims who then become subjects” by perpetrating acts “on behalf of the individual who victimized them.”

According to her family, the Connecticut girl was trained to hack into Roblox accounts and lock them — which allowed her to make demands of account owners if they wanted their accounts back. And she allegedly helped direct a series of threats that rattled Vernon-area schools for three months in late 2023 and early last year.

“I have placed two explosives in front of Rockville High School, and if they fail to detonate, I’m going to walk into there and I’m just going to shoot every kid I see,” a male with a British accent claimed during a call to Vernon police in late January 2024.

Those threats led Van Tasel to the girl whose mother spoke with ABC News. The girl was arrested on conspiracy-related charges and referred to juvenile court.

But even before her arrest, she had started to resist some of the demands that were being directed at her. As a result, her family’s home was bombarded by incidents of so-called “swatting,” when false reports of crimes or violence try to induce SWAT teams to respond to a location in an effort to intimidate targets there.

“One time … they had surrounded our whole house,” the girl’s mother said. “And then that kept going on and on.”

Scott said swatting is a common tactic used by adherents of 764 and similar networks when they don’t get compliance.

The man at the heart of the Connecticut girl’s ordeal is still under investigation by authorities, according to Van Tasel.

‘Be on the lookout’

Van Tasel and Scott offered several tips to parents worried about whether their children could fall victim to 764. In particular, they said parents should watch what their children are doing on applications and online games.

A spokesperson for Roblox agreed, saying in a statement to ABC News that parents should “engage in open conversations about online safety,” especially because 764 is “known for using a variety of online platforms” to evade online safeguards.

A Discord spokesperson, meanwhile, said that 764 is “an industry-wide issue,” and that the “horrific actions of 764 have no place on Discord or in society.”

Both spokespeople said each of their companies is “committed” to providing a safe and secure online environment for users, with both noting that each company uses technology to remove harmful content and, by policy, prohibits behavior endangering children.

Discord added that “behind the scenes” it made “proactive disclosures of information to law enforcement” and, “where possible,” assisted authorities in building the case against Nepal, who allegedly helped launch 764.

Van Tasel and Scott said parents should also look out for changes in their children’s activities or personality, and watch for questionable injuries to family pets or evidence of self-harm.

Scott said that if a child is wearing long-sleeved clothing or trying to cover up their body on hot days, that could be a sign of self-harm.

“Just be on the lookout for any of those things that are alarming, and just have in the back of your mind that this may all be a result of what is happening online,” Van Tasel said, urging parents to call law enforcement if they have concerns.

As for the Connecticut girl caught up in 764, her mother told ABC News that she cooperated with authorities, the case against her is “almost resolved,” and she’s now “back on track” after getting help.

“Back to having friends, back to attending activities,” her mother said. “Not quite back to where she was when it all began, but she’s getting there.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Department of Justice has been quietly investigating a Tennessee traffic stop in 2022 involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man at the center of a high-profile court battle over his mistaken deportation from Maryland to El Salvador by the Trump administration, ABC News has learned.

Federal investigators involved in the inquiry recently spoke with a convicted felon in an Alabama prison and questioned him about potential connections to Abrego Garcia, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The inmate, Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, 38, was the registered owner of a vehicle driven by Abrego Garcia when he was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol in late 2022, according to the sources. Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers and told police they’d been working construction in Missouri.

Federal agents investigating the Tennessee incident appeared late last month at the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega, Alabama, to question Hernandez-Reyes, who had an attorney present and was granted limited immunity, sources familiar with the interview said.

Hernandez-Reyes told investigators that he previously operated a “taxi service” based in Baltimore. He claimed to have met Abrego Garcia around 2015 and claimed to have hired him on multiple occasions to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to various locations in the United States, the sources told ABC News. The frequency and time frame of the alleged trips was not immediately clear.

It’s unclear whether prosecutors will ultimately gather enough evidence to bring charges against Abrego Garcia. The interview of Hernandez-Reyes, however, appears to be a new and aggressive step in the government’s efforts to gather potentially incriminating information about Abrego Garcia’s background — even as it resists calls for him to be provided typical protections to respond to such accusations through the American legal system.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment.

According to body camera footage of the 2022 traffic stop, the Tennessee troopers — after questioning Abrego Garcia — discussed among themselves their suspicions of human trafficking because nine people were traveling without luggage, but Abrego Garcia was not ticketed or charged. When asked to provide proof of insurance, Abrego Garcia told officers he would have to call his boss because he didn’t know where the insurance card was in the car. Audio from the police footage cuts out briefly after an officer asks Abrego Garcia who owned the vehicle.

The officers ultimately issued no speeding ticket and allowed Abrego Garcia to drive on with just a warning about an expired driver’s license, according to a report about the stop released last month by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Tennessee Highway Patrol, in a statement last month, said troopers had contacted federal authorities before making that decision.

“The Tennessee Highway Patrol can confirm a 2022 traffic stop of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was stopped for speeding on I-40,” a Tennessee Highway Patrol spokesperson said. “Per standard protocol, the THP contacted federal law enforcement authorities with the Biden-era FBI — the agency of jurisdiction — who made the decision not to detain him.”

An attorney for Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said last week that he saw no evidence of a crime in the Tennessee traffic stop.

“But the point is not the traffic stop — it’s that Mr. Abrego Garcia deserves his day in court. Bring him back to the United States,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “I have represented Kilmar Abrego Garcia for more than a month, and this bodycam video is the first time I’ve heard his voice. He has been denied the most basic protections of due process — no phone call to his lawyer, no call to his wife or child, and no opportunity to be heard,” he said.

Sandoval-Moshenberg, when reached Monday by ABC News, declined further comment.

When details of the Tennessee traffic stop were first publicized, Abrego Garcia’s wife said her husband sometimes transported groups of fellow construction workers between job sites.

“Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means he cannot respond to the claims,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura said in mid-April.

The Trump administration in recent weeks has been publicizing Abrego Garcia’s interactions with police over the years, despite a lack of corresponding criminal charges. And now the incident in Tennessee nearly three years ago is under renewed scrutiny by the Justice Department, sources tell ABC News, just as the litigation over his erroneous deportation enters a critical stage.

The administration faces deadlines this week to answer discovery requests about what steps officials have taken to comply with a district judge’s order — affirmed by the US Supreme Court — to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. Four U.S. officials are also set to be deposed this week by lawyers for Abrego-Garcia.

Abrego Garcia’s expulsion in March to El Salvador violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shielded him from deportation to his native country, according to immigration court records. The judge had determined that Abrego Garcia would likely face persecution there by local gangs that had terrorized him and his family.

Abrego Garcia was initially sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison but is now believed to be held in a different facility.

Last month, after Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.

Hernandez-Reyes, who was not present during the 2022 Tennessee traffic stop, was charged in 2020 in a 7-count federal indictment for unlawful transportation of undocumented immigrants within the U.S. According to a criminal complaint, Hernandez-Reyes had rented a minivan that was pulled over by police in Gautier, Mississippi, and found with a total of nine undocumented occupants. Abrego Garcia was not among them.

Hernandez-Reyes allegedly admitted he was in the U.S. illegally and told federal investigators from the Department of Homeland Security that he had previously lived in Maryland but had since moved to Houston. He said he operated a Texas-based business transporting people throughout the U.S. for $350 per person. In June 2020, he pleaded guilty to a single count of unlawful transportation of an alien and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and subsequently deported, according to court records.

He was found back in the U.S. in late 2022 when he was charged in Montgomery County, Texas, with illegal discharge of a firearm, according to state court records.

After serving time in Texas he was charged federally with illegally reentering the U.S. after previously being convicted of a felony. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months.

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(JEROME, Fla.) — A man and a dog were killed in a suspected bear attack in Florida, officials said.

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office said it received a call shortly after 7 a.m. Monday involving a “bear encounter.”

The incident was reported in the area of State Road 29 and U.S. 41, just south of the Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area, a conservation area, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.

“The FWC is actively investigating a suspected fatal wildlife attack, that’s been reported to involve a bear, near Jerome in Collier County,” the commission said in a statement. “Preliminary information notes that the attack resulted in the death of a man and a dog.”

The FWC warned residents and visitors that the animal may still be in the area as authorities work to locate it and secure the perimeter.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we urge residents and visitors to remain vigilant, and avoid the area,” the FWC said.

The FWC is investigating the incident.

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(SAUK COUNTY, Wis.) — A Wisconsin woman who was missing for over 60 years was discovered to be “alive and well,” according to the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office.

Audrey Backeberg, who was reported missing on July 7, 1962, was found by detectives outside the state of Wisconsin, the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement shared last week.

At the time of her disappearance, Backeberg was residing in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, the sheriff’s office said. The family’s babysitter claimed she and Aubrey — who was 20 at the time — hitchhiked to Madison, Wisconsin, and then took a Greyhound bus to Indianapolis.

The babysitter said Backeberg was last seen “walking around the corner away from the bus stop,” according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice

Since her disappearance, Backeberg has “never returned home and has not been heard from again,” the Wisconsin Department of Justice said in a missing persons poster.

Throughout the years, investigators “pursued numerous leads in an effort to determine Audrey’s whereabouts,” the sheriff’s office said. Despite all efforts, the case “eventually went cold,” officials said.

But earlier this year, the case was assigned to Sauk County Sheriff’s Detective Isaac Hanson, who reevaluated all the case files, evidence and also re-interviewed witnesses. Through Hanson’s work, he was able to obtain an address from Backeberg’s sister’s online ancestry account, he told Milwaukee ABC affiliate WISN.

Hanson called officials at the local sheriff’s department and asked if they could visit the address, and “10 minutes later, she called me and we talked for 45 minutes,” Hanson told WISN.

Backeberg is “alive and well” and currently resides outside of the state of Wisconsin, the sheriff’s office said. Officials said her disappearance was “by her own choice and not the result of any criminal activity or foul play.”

Hanson said Backeberg “had her reasons” for disappearing, but an abusive husband may have played a role in her decision to leave, he told WISN. It is still unclear why Backeberg stayed away for over six decades.

“This resolution underscores both the importance of continued work and the dedication of the Sheriff’s Office to providing answers to families and the community,” officials said.

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(SAN DIEGO) — Three dead bodies and four survivors in need of medical care were discovered on a boat that washed ashore near San Diego on Monday morning, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Nine people are unaccounted for, the Coast Guard said.

Several local agencies are helping with the search.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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