Violent Online Group CVLT Coerced Kids to Self-Harm, DOJ Says

Last week, federal authorities in California’s Central District unsealed an indictment filed Jan. 17 accusing three American men and one French man of participating in a “neo-Nazi child exploitation enterprise” that “groomed and then coerced minors to produce child sexual abuse material and images of self-harm.” The online network, which authorities claim promotes extremist ideology and coerces kids into hurting themselves — or worse — is shocking in its details, though experts say crimes of this nature are growing.

Collin John Thomas Walker, 23, of New Jersey, Kaleb Christopher Merritt, 24, of Texas, Clint Jordan Lopaka Nahooikaika Borge, 41, of Hawaii, and Rohan Sandeep Rane, 28, of Antibes, France, allegedly victimized at least 16 minors around the world through an online group called CVLT. The indictment also referred to two unnamed minor co-conspirators, one of whom was also described as a victim. 

Through CVLT, authorities claim, the defendants “encouraged” children to record themselves participating in increasingly degrading and dangerous behavior, eventually “escalating to killing themselves on livestream,” according to the indictment. (The U.S. Attorney’s Office overseeing the case did not provide any further information on any specific alleged suicides and did not immediately respond on the record to Rolling Stone’s request for clarification.) If convicted, they face 20 years to life in prison. Rane has been in French custody since 2022 on child exploitation charges, Merritt is already serving a prison sentence in Virginia for child rape, and the other two men appeared in court, where they were assigned attorneys before being remanded to U.S. Marshals. (Their lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.)

The accusations are the latest in a series of federal prosecutions aimed at stopping people — sometimes minors themselves — from targeting kids through online harm groups. The networks of online communities, with names like 764 and CVLT, recruit and groom children on public platforms – including gaming sites – desensitizing them to extreme ideas and violence before coercing and extorting mainly girls into producing horrifying and illegal content: images of self-harm, animal abuse videos, and child sexual abuse material (often abbreviated CSAM). “They’re kind of like mimicking urban legends,” says a cyber-security expert who asked to remain anonymous to avoid death threats. “They think to themselves, ‘What’s the worst possible thing that I can do?’ And then they try to do it. It’s like a challenge to them.”

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These types of harm groups are a relatively new phenomenon. CVLT originated in 2020 as a group that harmed children with overlap in the doxxing and hacking communities, while 764 launched as a Discord server a year later. Since then, 764 has become a catchall term referring to a community of overlapping harm groups operating on public platforms like Discord and Telegram, with some distinctive characteristics: Unlike financial sextortion enterprises, 764-style groups rarely seek money from their victims; perpetrators are often minors or users who aged into young adulthood while participating in ongoing abuse; and the type of harm they perpetrate, while often including CSAM, can also involve enticing and coercing victims into self-harm. 

The groups’ reach extends internationally, and it’s tough to assess the exact number of perpetrators and victims. The cyber-security expert says that in their work, they saw the number of abusers and victims grow “exponentially” since 2020, from the low dozens to low hundreds. A 2024 investigation by Wired, with the Washington Post and European outlets Recorder and Der Spiegel, analyzed 3 million messages and found thousands of users across several countries. 

In their most recent data, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that in 2023, submissions to their tip line for reporting online child exploitation had increased by more than 20 percent since 2020. In September 2023, the FBI issued a PSA warning about “violent online groups” coercing minors into harming themselves. “These groups use threats, blackmail, and manipulation to control the victims into recording or live-streaming self-harm, sexually explicit acts, and/or suicide,” the warning read. 

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In the California case, the defendants allegedly followed a pattern: They invited kids to servers run by CVLT on a platform the indictment refers to as “Platform D.” There, they groomed kids, exploiting vulnerabilities like mental health struggles or a history of sexual abuse and promising to protect them from online predators. They’d then expose the children to extreme content like imagery of animals being tortured, women being raped, and “gore” child pornography while promoting extreme ideologies like neo-Nazism and pedophilia. 

Gradually, the alleged perpetrators urged children to participate in increasingly degrading, extreme and dangerous behavior themselves, like calling themselves names — including telling a Black girl to call herself “slave” and the N-word — punching themselves, and cutting and eating their own hair. This would escalate to engaging in sexual or violent acts, sometimes involving their pets, sometimes including the “insertion of foreign objects like knives or cacti into their genitals.”

Authorities say CVLT is a neo-Nazi group, but the cyber-security expert says it’s also common for actors in these communities to use provocative imagery, including satanic symbols, simply for shock value. “They’re not using a picture of Satan because they love Satan or know anything about the religion or history,” they say, cautioning that this shouldn’t become a distraction. “They’re only using a picture of Satan because reporters don’t like it. They want to make the adults mad. And that choice is really all about their empowerment at the expense of others.”

At its core, the threat of 764-style harm groups suggests a bigger societal problem, according to Professor and the Director of the Center for Cyber Crime studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice Marie-Helen Maras. “This points to a larger issue of the dehumanization of women, the promotion of women as subservient, not equal,” she says. “That feeds into this narrative, because if you treat women and girls as possessions, as chattel, you do not respect their rights. They become another commodity that’s distributed amongst groups that engage in performance crime for an audience.”

2023, the same year the FBI put out its PSA, also marked the start of a wave of high-profile criminal cases against these abusers. Bradley Cadenhead, the then-18-year-old founder of 764, was sentenced to 80 years in prison after pleading guilty in Texas to possession of child pornography.

Last November, a Michigan man affiliated with 764 was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to child exploitation. Known as “Rabid” online, Richard Anthony Reyna Densmore, 47, promoted livestreams of children engaging in self-mutilation — “cutshows” — and sexually explicit activity on camera. Merrick Garland, then attorney general, commented at the time, “No child should have to experience this heinous abuse. The Justice Department will ensure that criminals engaged in this depraved conduct are held accountable in a court of law.”

In Tennessee, 25-year-old Kyle William Spitze, a 764 member who used the display name “Criminal” on Telegram, is awaiting his May sentencing date after pleading guilty last December to charges related to child pornography and “animal crushing” videos for mutilating chickens. He is facing 30 years to life in prison. 

Among the defendants recently indicted in California, Merritt is already serving a 45-year suspended sentence in Virginia. State court records show Merritt, a CVLT member at the time, pleaded guilty in 2023 to the rape of a minor under 13, abduction with the intent to defile, and production of child pornography, among other charges. The convictions stemmed from a 2021 incident where Merritt groomed a 12-year-old girl online before traveling from Texas to her home in Henry County, Virginia, camping out in the woods behind her house, having sex with her, and then enticing her to leave with him, prompting an Amber Alert before police found the child and arrested Merritt in North Carolina. The California indictment accuses Merritt of victimizing four more children. (A representative for the Henry County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office said the victim there was not involved in the federal case.)

Reached for comment on eight different federal cases related to 764-style harm groups, a representative for the FBI’s National Press Office declined to comment on case specifics but offered a statement: “The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and we take that especially seriously when it comes to the young and vulnerable. We will work closely with our law enforcement partners to investigate and hold accountable anyone who preys on children and coerces them to harm themselves.”

Maras, the John Jay professor, says while criminal prosecutions can teach us about the methods these groups use to perpetrate violence, ending the threat requires a multifaceted response, including public awareness campaigns and technological tools to assist people who are targeted by these actors, along with seeking convictions. She hopes to see more efforts focused on helping victims, working to reduce shame around this kind of abuse, and denying the perpetrators the attention they seek. “I think what we need to be focused on more is, how do we do things better?” she says. “How can we better protect women and girls so they’re not subjected to this type of technology-facilitated violence?”

If you believe you or someone you know is a victim of exploitation, you can make a report on NCMEC’s CyberTipline page https://cybertipline.org, or call their 24-Hour Call Center at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) NCMEC’s free Take It Down service helps remove online nudes and sexually explicit photos of minors. Have images and videos you’d like to have taken down? Visit: https://takeitdown.ncmec.org/

If you believe you are the victim of an online harm group, the FBI recommends victims retain all information regarding the incident (usernames, email addresses, websites or names of platforms used for communication, photos, videos, etc.) and immediately report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov