“Greggy’s Cult” — the on-line sextortion crew taken down by the feds this week — was linked to a global neo-Nazi community that has duped youngsters into horrific intercourse acts, self-mutilation and even homicide, The Publish has realized.
The 5 alleged ringleaders of the twisted group scoured on-line gaming websites for weak victims as younger as 11, terrorizing them into offering sexually express movies and marking their our bodies to point out their loyalty to the creeps, Brooklyn federal prosecutors mentioned in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
However that was simply the tip of the iceberg, in response to the feds and law-enforcement sources.
Members of a loosely-linked wider community of sickos often called “764” — a perverted crew of on-line predators based by then-15-year-od Texas dropout Bradley Cadenhead in 2020 — have been additionally a part of the sickening Greggy’s Cult, prosecutors mentioned.
“Greggy’s Cult got here into existence earlier than one other sadistic extortion community, 764, and distinguished members of 764 and different comparable networks that adopted have been additionally members of Greggy’s Cult,” the US Lawyer’s Workplace for the Jap District of New York mentioned in an announcement.
Cadenhead is at the moment serving an 80-year federal jail sentence — however others have stored 764 alive.
In accordance with a report by the Anti Defamation League launched in June, 764 is itself an offshoot of the Order of 9 Angels, or O9A, a far-right extremist group mixing Satanic and neo-Nazi beliefs.
Victims of 764, usually weak kids scuffling with their sexuality, consuming problems or psychological well being points, are recruited on gaming websites like Roblox and lured into messaging apps like Discord.
That’s the place cult members start to control the delicate youngsters, officers mentioned.
“Victims are sometimes pressured to have interaction in more and more excessive behaviors to check their ‘loyalty’ to their abuser, equivalent to killing household pets or asphyxiating themselves,” the ADL report mentioned. “Self-harm, notably slicing, can also be extraordinarily frequent amongst people related to 764.”
In accordance with the report, Cadenhead’s 764 was impressed by one other neo-Nazi group, often called the Maniac Homicide Cult, or MKY, began in Russia and Ukraine as early as 2017.
Participation within the cults usually have tragic outcomes — {the teenager} who opened hearth at Antioch Excessive Faculty in Tennessee in January claimed he as finishing up the taking pictures on behalf of MKY.
Different sick crimes have been linked to victims of 764 and comparable teams, together with an 18-year-old’s livestreamed stabbing close to a mosque in Turkey in August 2024, and an April 2022 assault by a 17-year-old German nationwide dwelling in Romania, who broadcast himself slitting a girl’s throat, the ADL mentioned.
The US Division of Justice has begun to dismantle the elusive cults, together with indictments towards two alleged 764 ringleaders — Leonidas Varagiannis, an American dwelling in Greece, and North Carolina resident Prasan Nepal — in Washington, DC, in June.
In Might, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and the division’s deputy commissioner for intel and counterterrorism, Rebecca Weiner, warned in regards to the on-line cult in an op-ed in The Publish.
“It’s the stuff of nightmares, and dismantling these virulent networks is now a prime nationwide safety precedence throughout the USA and Europe,” they wrote. “However most dad and mom don’t know they exist.”
Brooklyn federal prosecutors took one other chunk out of the creepy cults this week.
5 males, together with Queens resident Hector Bermudez, 29, have been charged with baby exploitation, conspiracy to provide baby pornography and different raps for main Greggy’s Cult.
Bermudez, together with Rumaldo Valez, 22, of Hawaii, Camden Rodriguez, 22, of Colorado, Zachary Dosch, 26, of New Mexico, and David Brilhante, 28, of California, have been accused of “wicked conduct equivalent to repeatedly encouraging victims to kill themselves or encouraging them to insert family objects into their genitals or anus,” the feds mentioned.
The cult operated from January 2020 via January 2021 — however a number of of the ringleaders continued to lure minors on-line, even after Greggy’s Cult disbanded and the server was scrubbed from Discord, in response to prosecutors.
Rodriguez allegedly tried to extort a minor on-line as just lately as April, whereas prosecutors mentioned Bermudez has tried to enlist at the least two minors on-line in June.
Brilhante is accused of sending baby phonography to a sufferer in September 2024, prosecutors mentioned.
“I strongly urge dad and mom and caregivers to have conversations with their youngsters in regards to the risks of speaking on-line with strangers and people who search to cruelly exploit them,” EDNY US Lawyer Joseph Nocella mentioned as he introduced the indictment.
