A federal judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan sentenced Richard Densmore, a 47-year old Army veteran and member of the criminal network known as 764, to 30 years in federal prison on Thursday. Densmore, who pleaded guilty to one count of sexually exploiting a child, was arrested in January at his home in Kaleva, Michigan where he lived with his grandmother.
764, which was created by Texas teenager Bradley Cadenhead in 2020, has rapidly grown in the past four years. The network has been linked to criminal cases in seven US states, as well as in Brazil, Canada, the UK, and multiple European nations. Cadenhead is currently serving a lengthy sentence in a Texas state prison for offenses related to child sexual abuse imagery.
Due to its ties to extremist ideologies such as neofascist accelerationism and the Order of Nine Angles, the US Department of Justice and the FBI classify 764 as a “tier one/category 1” terrorism threat that poses a direct threat to the national and economic security of the United States. According to a federal law enforcement official, the DOJ has seen 764-related cases in every field office in the US and investigates about 10 such cases every week.
During a press conference after Densmore’s sentencing, assistant attorney general Matt Olsen of the National Security Division addressed 764 as an extremist threat for the first time. He stated that the group seeks to harm children in order to destroy society, incite civil unrest, and ultimately bring down the US government.
Known for engaging in child abuse and distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), 764 controls its victims through fear, using compromising photographs, personal information, and the threat of public exposure to extort minors into sexual exploitation or self-harm. According to federal officials, many members of the network aim to force their victims to commit suicide on livestream for entertainment or for their own sense of fame within the group.
In the government’s sentencing memorandum, federal prosecutors requested the maximum 30-year penalty for Densmore’s role in creating and leading online chat rooms where children were encouraged to harm themselves and engage in depraved sexual acts. Previous government filings show that Densmore ran a 764-adjacent server called “S3wer,” where he hosted other members and groomed underage victims into sexually exploiting themselves and harming themselves for his benefit, often carving his alias into their skin.
