WASHINGTON — The powerful House Oversight Committee is investigating a sadistic, nihilistic terror cult known as “764” that preys on minors and coerces them into sex acts, self-harm, animal torture, and other vile actions.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Subcommittee on Federal and Government Reform Law Enforcement Chair Clay Higgins (R-La.) demanded Tuesday that the FBI give lawmakers a briefing on its efforts to undermine 764.
“Reporting indicates the FBI has opened more than 250 investigations tied to the group, which preys on children and teenagers on popular online platforms,” Commer and Higgins told FBI Director Kash Patel in a letter obtained by The Post.
“The disturbing tactics attributed to this network — grooming, manipulating, and blackmailing of minors — underscore a serious and continuously evolving threat to children and families across the United States. These harms demand rigorous oversight.”
Comer and Higgins are particularly interested in learning about the bureau’s “capabilities to track and apprehend” 764 acolytes.
They requested an overview of the FBI’s efforts, challenges the bureau faces, what additional resources it may need from Congress, and a breakdown of how the bureau deploys its resources to track groups like 764, including coordination with local authorities.
Comer and Higgins gave the FBI until Feb. 24 to respond to their request.
The cyber predators often target girls between the ages of 10 and 17 and typically start by courting them in popular online platforms before taking them “off-platform” into closed chatrooms.
From there, the sickos will typically begin a pressure campaign to push their victims into disturbing acts such as attacking animals, hurting family, and self-harm.
That depraved behavior usually gets filmed and then used as blackmail to coerce the victims into carrying out even more abhorrent acts.
“The originators of this and kind of the drivers of this are nihilistic in worldview,” Department of Homeland Security Cyber Crimes Center deputy assistant director Mike Prado told The Post earlier this month.
“What makes this difficult is that these cases tend to spiderweb,” he added. “A lot of times, today’s victims or yesterday’s victims are now today’s or tomorrow’s perpetrators.”
The network was founded in 2021 by Bradley Chance Cadenhead, who dropped out of school after being a target of bullying. He named the network after the first three digits of the zip codes for his hometown of Stephenville, Texas — 76401 and 76402.
Online, Cadenhead gave his victims guides on how to kill themselves and pressured girls as young as 10 to send him nudes. He and his followers often shared gore and child porn.
Cadenhead pleaded guilty in 2023 to nine counts of child pornography possession and was sentenced to 80 years in Texas state prison.
The 764 is believed to have been inspired by other groups like CVLT, which also pressured children into sex acts, and the neo-Nazi Order of Nine Angles.
In investigating 764, the feds also have to navigate a bevy of offshoots, according to Prado, who noted that online exploitation has risen since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The goal of these groups in general is to really one-up or top [each other],” he explained. “These groups gain online credibility amongst themselves for the increased level of depravity that they can inflict or cause to their victims.”
