Content Sensitivity Warning
This briefing includes themes of animal cruelty, child exploitation, sexual abuse, and suicide. If you have seen disturbing content online or are having distressing thoughts, you can reach Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.
The Australian Federal Police has published a guide to Understanding Sadistic Online Exploitation for parents and carers, which can be accessed here.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has issued a Reporting Steps flowchart for what to do when you see distressing content online, which can be accessed here.
For several years, law enforcement agencies globally have warned about the emergence of online extremist networks that target vulnerable individuals – primarily minors – and coerce them into acts of sexual humiliation, animal cruelty, violence, and self-harm.
The dangers posed by these networks are now being scrutinised in two concurrent court proceedings in different parts of the world. Both cases are examining accountability for the tragic death by suicide of Jay Taylor, a 13 year-old transgender boy from Seattle who was targeted on Discord by a leader of the online network known as 764.
In January 2026, a German court began hearing the case against Shahriar J., a 21-year-old German-Iranian medical student who operated under the alias ‘White Tiger’. He faces 204 charges involving more than 30 victims, including murder in connection with Jay’s death and five counts of attempted murder.
The following month, Jay’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in the United States against the communication platform Discord.
The facts of this case (below) are deeply disturbing and raise urgent questions about responsibility for online abuse, as well as what governments, police agencies, and technology platforms can do to prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future.
The tragic death of Jay Taylor
On 16 January 2022, Jay made a post on Discord looking for gay or transgender friends who shared his interest in craft projects. He was contacted by a 12-year-old girl located in Finland who had been subjected to months of coercion, blackmail, and escalating pressure to self-harm by White Tiger. When she expressed her desire to stay alive, she was told by White Tiger that in order to do so, she would have to find somebody else to die in her place.
Under White Tiger’s direction and control, the girl began communicating with Jay. She identified Jay as a vulnerable target given his history of anorexia, depression and suicidal ideation, and pressured him to enter a joint suicide pact. Impersonating the girl, White Tiger provided detailed instructions on how to commit the act while on a video call with other 764 network members. White Tiger encouraged Jay to live-stream his suicide on Instagram which took place in the early morning of 17 January, only one day after he had begun his search on Discord for friendship and community.
Jay’s parents initially had no knowledge of the online events preceding his death. They learned what had happened after a teenage girl in Australia entered a chat in which White Tiger and others were sharing the recording of his death. The girl, who had herself been targeted by 764, located Jay’s father and sent him the video.
Jay’s case demonstrates one of the most disturbing features of these online networks: that children who have been groomed and abused themselves can be coerced into recruiting and manipulating new victims. It highlights the cross-border nature of the network, with victims, offenders and witnesses located in different countries, making detection, investigation and prosecution more difficult. It also shows how abuse can move rapidly across platforms – from initial contact and coordination on Discord to livestreaming of violence on Instagram.
The 764 network
764 is a decentralised, global network that operates within a broader online ecosystem known as ‘the Com’ (short for ‘the Community’).
The Com consists of overlapping online spaces that are associated with nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), a form of extremism in which violence, cruelty, and social disruption are treated as ends in themselves rather than as tools for achieving a political objective. Elements within the Com have been linked to accelerationism, an ideology which encourages acts of chaos and destruction as a means to bring about the downfall of society. Some parts of the network use neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and other extremist imagery.
The original 764 group was founded during the COVID pandemic by Bradley Cadenhead, then a 15-year-old living in Texas, who named it after the first three digits of his local postcode. Cadenhead adopted his tactics of grooming and extortion from another Discord community called CVLT. After Cadenhead’s arrest in 2021, 764 split into several groups that retained similar imagery (below), methods and goals. New figures emerged within the network, including White Tiger.
764 typically recruits participants and targets victims on online platforms where young individuals play games, socialise or seek companionship – such as Discord, Telegram, Roblox, Minecraft, Twitch and Steam. Members deliberately target children with mental health challenges or marginalised identities, including LGBTQ+ youth. In some cases, victims are offered in-game currency in exchange for intimate images before being directed to more private online spaces where they are blackmailed.
The sadistic online exploitation (SOE) cycle often evolves as follows:
Targeting a vulnerable user between 8-17 years of age
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Building trust or posing as a friend or romantic interest
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Obtaining an intimate image or personal information
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Threatening exposure to family, friends or school
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Demanding further sexual, violent or degrading material
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Escalating to animal cruelty, torture or self-harm
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Recording and circulating the material within the network for clout
Sextortion is one of the network’s key methods. As noted above, a 764 member may pose as a romantic interest and gradually persuade their target to provide an intimate image or personal information. The victim is then shamed, isolated and threatened with exposure unless further demands are met. Unlike financially motivated sextortion, the objective is generally not money but control, humiliation and escalating violence. Authorities have warned that members are increasingly encouraging victims to commit deadly acts, including suicide, school shootings and other mass-casualty attacks.
Within 764, influence is often tied to the extremity of the abuse a member can make a victim perform. In this sense, violence is also a source of power and influence. The material collected is stored in a ‘lorebook’ which acts as a type of digital currency, and is used to recruit participants and build status.
An emerging extremist threat
The 764 network forms part of a broader online extremist threat that is gaining increasing attention from child-protection, cybercrime and counterterrorism authorities. On 6 March 2025, the FBI issued a public warning about a sharp increase in activity by 764 and other violent online networks operating in the United States and internationally. By November 2025, the FBI was investigating over 350 people across the United States suspected of involvement with 764 or related networks.
Australia has also made the online extremist threat a national priority. On 29 October 2025, the Australian Federal Police launched Taskforce Pompilid to identify and disrupt online criminal networks targeting young Australians. At the time of its launch, the AFP said it had identified 59 alleged offenders in Australia and that joint operations had resulted in nine arrests overseas and three domestically.
A growing number of international cases demonstrate the range and seriousness of the conduct linked to the network:
In July 2026, Alexis Aldair Chavez was sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment for racketeering and child-exploitation offences. Chavez was an administrator of 8884, a NVE network related to 764.
In February 2024, a 14-year-old boy in Canada was charged with producing, possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material, distributing intimate images without consent, and making explosives.
In January 2025, British teenager and 764 member Cameron Finnigan pled guilty to encouraging or assisting suicide, possessing material for terrorist purposes, and possessing child sexual abuse material. Finnigan referred to himself online as ‘Hitler’s child’ and had discussed plots with other members to carry out ‘terror week’.
In April 2025, US authorities arrested Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, who were accused of leading a core subgroup known as 764 Inferno and operating an international child-exploitation enterprise.
In May 2025, US authorities arrested a 14-year-old boy from Oregon who was accused of planning an explosives attack and mass shooting at a shopping centre in Washington. The FBI said the teenager had shared detailed attack plans online and ABC News reported that he had pledged allegiance to 764.
In October 2025, US prosecutors charged 21-year-old 764 leader Baron Martin with participation in a child-exploitation enterprise as well as conspiracy to kill, kidnap or maim a person overseas. The indictment names nine victims, eight aged between 11-15. Martin was also charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, the first such charge against an alleged 764 member.
The diversity of these cases raises questions about whether 764 should be treated primarily as a criminal network, an extremist movement or be formally designated as a terrorist organisation.
To sanction or not to sanction?
In December 2025, Canada became the first country to designate 764 as a terrorist entity, giving its authorities stronger powers to investigate, disrupt and prosecute activities connected with the network. No other country has formally designated 764 as yet, but New Zealand has designated the Order of Nine Angles, an extremist organisation linked to the broader 764 ecosystem.
The treatment of the Terrorgram Collective could serve as a model for other countries considering whether to sanction 764. Terrorgram is a decentralised online network that operates primarily through channels on the messaging platform Telegram. The United States designated Terrorgram and three of its leaders in January 2025, Australia listed it as a terrorist organisation in June 2025, and Canada and New Zealand followed in December. Its designation demonstrates that an online network does not need conventional headquarters or a rigid hierarchy to be treated as a terrorist entity.
Sanctioning 764 could have practical benefits. Depending on the country, designation may criminalise participation or support, enable asset freezes, and grant specialised investigative powers. It would also signal the seriousness and scale of the network’s conduct and warn potential participants that involvement may carry terrorism-related consequences.
However, Terrorgram presents a more robust case for designation. The organisation espouses a white supremacist and accelerationist ideology and openly provides guidance and instruction for terrorist attacks. By contrast, 764 is more ideologically varied: some participants embrace nihilism, neo-Nazism or accelerationism, while others appear motivated primarily by sexual sadism, cruelty, status or belonging. For these participants, they are not necessarily committing violence to advance an ideological cause, and a terrorist designation might actually be counterproductive, enhancing the notoriety sought by participants and increasing the perceived status of the network.
764 is also more fragmented. It has no stable leadership, formal membership or clear hierarchy, and its participants continually form new groups under different names. Designating 764 may therefore just target a label that can easily be abandoned or replaced without disrupting the underlying network.
Cross-border challenges
Whether or not 764 is formally designated as a terrorist organisation, disrupting it presents a separate practical challenge: its activities routinely cross national and platform boundaries. A victim may be in one country, the offender in another and an intermediary or witness in a third, while the relevant communications and account data are held by technology companies elsewhere.
The investigation into White Tiger demonstrates both the importance and the limitations of international law enforcement cooperation. The German case began after the FBI, while investigating Jay Taylor’s death, traced White Tiger to Hamburg and alerted German authorities. US investigators had identified Shahriar J. as their suspect by mid-2022 and presented their evidence to German police in February 2023. However, he was not arrested until June 2025, more than three years after Jay’s death.
The reason for the delay was because, according to German law, the FBI material could not be used as evidence in a German court, requiring the investigation to begin again from scratch. This caused considerable frustration among the US investigators, who feared that White Tiger remained free to target further victims.
The White Tiger investigation shows that identifying an offender is only the first step; the greater challenge may be turning evidence gathered across several countries and platforms into timely action. It also raises a related question: what responsibility should those platforms bear when their services are used to find, isolate and exploit vulnerable children?
Discord’s liability
The Taylor family’s lawsuit focuses on the responsibility of the platform on which Jay was targeted. The case does not merely argue that harmful actors used and communicated on Discord but that Discord’s design, settings, and limited safety measures enabled 764 to locate, isolate and cause harm to vulnerable children.
The complaint states that Discord promotes itself as a place where socially isolated people can find friendship, belonging and community, and permits children as young as 13 to join. The family alleges that, during the relevant period, Discord had no meaningful age or identity-verification system and employed, at most, 79 trust and safety staff. It argues that Discord’s “unmoderated” model, combined with its appeal to vulnerable young users, created conditions that attracted abusers and allowed organised exploitation to develop.
Discord is also designed around private and semi-private interactions, with most servers being small and invitation-only. Although these spaces offer privacy and community, their closed nature can make coordinated abuse harder for parents and platform moderators to detect. Discord does not record voice and video calls, and research suggests that the fleeting nature of real-time communication makes misconduct more difficult to document and investigate.
Jay’s family claims that Discord failed to take reasonable steps to prevent or disrupt child exploitation despite the foreseeable danger to young users. They note that Discord had received numerous warnings of the danger posed by 764 – for example, in July 2021, a 15-year-old girl livestreamed a suicide attempt after being tormented by 764 members. She had reportedly been coerced into carving offenders’ usernames and extremist symbols, including swastikas, into her skin. Jay was targeted approximately six months later.
Government authorities have since raised similar concerns about Discord’s approach to child safety. In May 2026, the Texas Attorney General sued the company, alleging that its product design exposed children to predators while misleading parents and users about the safety of the platform. The lawsuit cites several incidents of violence and abuse, and argues that these were foreseeable consequences of inadequate age verification, unsafe default settings and a largely reactive approach to moderation. Discord disputes these allegations.
The court will ultimately determine Discord’s liability in the case of Jay’s death. But the broader policy question is whether a platform that invites young people to form private communities should be required to design those spaces around foreseeable child-safety risks. The issue is not simply whether Discord should have banned 764 under its rules, but whether it had systems in place capable of detecting and disrupting the network before abuse occurred at all.