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Inside the FBI highlights news, cases, and people from around the Bureau—in audio form. For more information, visit fbi.gov.
[A mysterious-feeling track featuring strings begins.]
Narrator: The podcast episode you’re about to hear contains discussions of graphic violence, self-harm, sexual abuse, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
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Narrator: Groups of criminals are creating and joining “violent online networks” and are flocking to digital platforms to prey upon vulnerable victims who seek solace in internet communities.
Supervisory Special Agent Abbi Beccaccio: Vulnerable victims can be any adult or underage person that is going through some sort of a struggle, someone that might have attraction to a different support network.
Narrator: That's FBI Supervisory Special Agent Abbi Beccaccio, a unit chief who oversees specialized child sexual exploitation investigations.
These bad actors meet their targets where they’re already at online, and work to earn their trust. But then, these criminals terrorize their targets in hopes of getting them to engage in self-harm, sexually explicit acts, animal cruelty, and even suicide—sometimes on camera. These subjects have even been known to take their abuse a step further by sharing that graphic footage within their networks to further perpetuate this vicious criminal cycle.
On this episode of our podcast, we’ll break down this threat, tell you how to recognize the signs that a violent online network may be targeting you or a loved one, and teach you how to report this crime to the proper authorities so that potential victims can get the help they need.
This is Inside the FBI.
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Narrator: The term “violent online network” might be new to you, but one of the most notorious of these criminal coalitions—known as 764—might sound more familiar. As FBI Supervisory Special Agent Kyle Cappello, an assistant section chief with the Bureau’s Counterterrorism Division, explains...
Supervisory Special Agent Kyle Cappello: ...764 was one of the original names of these criminal networks back around 2020, 2021.
Narrator: And after multiple members of these networks—including the founders of 764—were arrested, the original batch of networks...
Cappello: ...splintered into countless offshoots. So, while the 764 network itself no longer exists, you still hear people refer to this conduct by 764 as shorthand.
Beccaccio: There's a number of different motivations that the FBI has noted over time specific to these violent online networks.
Narrator: Some of these networks engage in what’s known as sadistic online exploitation. Beccaccio says this activity targets...
Beccaccio: ...these vulnerable populations, to include children, into doing unspeakable acts: producing child sexual abuse material, engaging in acts of animal cruelty, sexually exploiting their siblings, and—in some cases—even encouraging victims into significant self-harm.
Narrator: According to Beccaccio, around 2021, the FBI started noticing a concerning pattern involving the
kinds of child exploitation reports coming into law enforcement.
Beccaccio: Different and more alarming trends that were occurring in the material that caused us to pause and start looking into the threat a little differently, start collaborating internally with different divisions that were involved, trying to figure out the motivations for creating this type of content and how the FBI could look at tackling it.
Cappello: We started noticing, in particular, that self-harm component pretty significantly, where there was names carved into victims’ skin or symbols carved into the skin, which was a little bit out of the norm of your standard cases. And that's when we started noticing this new trend of conduct.
Narrator: Other violent online network activity can be driven by a desire to wreak havoc on society, as a whole. As Cappello explains...
Cappello: ...others we've seen enter these networks and commit these acts as a result of their internal ideology—what we've been referring to as “nihilistic violent extremism.” Essentially, they're committing these horrific acts and getting victims to do horrific things due to their underlying desire to sow chaos.
Essentially, they want to target the most vulnerable populations, and in doing so, they hope to bring down the fabric of society, whether or not they actually have the ability to do that.
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Narrator: Regardless of the motive behind this twisted abuse...
Cappello: ...perpetrators in this space find their victims in a variety of means, but often times they start by connecting with them in the online space, often just as friends or a trusted person online. From there, they might start forming an online relationship with someone they consider a potential victim.
Maybe they start making that relationship more of a romantic relationship. They'll make the victim trust them as a friend or even a loved one and, from there, they might request the victim provide the perpetrator with a compromising or explicit photograph. They might request the victim do compromising acts, record it, and send it to the perpetrator. And from there the behavior tends to escalate.
Narrator: They start asking for more and more harmful acts or use the content they've received from the victim—like their or their family’s personally identifiable information—as leverage.
Beccaccio: The FBI refers, generally speaking, to this type of behavior as
“grooming.” It's existed in a number of different forms over the years, certainly in child exploitation.
Narrator: It’s also worth noting that victims don’t need to traverse the dark web to get ensnared by these criminal networks.
Cappello: We're referring to publicly available, accessible online platforms which minors or other vulnerable individuals can access—essentially, social media platforms. This is where a lot of these criminal actors are looking for their potential victims.
Now, over time, once a relationship is established, they do sometimes move their victims over to more encrypted peer-to-peer messaging applications that aren't necessarily publicly available. But most of this activity does start on the open internet.
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Narrator: As these nefarious networks grow in number, the FBI wants to educate the public about the threat they pose so that we can break the cycle and save the lives of victims the world over.
Cappello: Each criminal actor in this space doesn't necessarily just target one individual person. Victims are targeted by multiple subjects in this space, and a lot of these subjects have countless victims. There's been times where we've identified subjects who have five, 10, 20 different victims that they're targeting. So, these victims aren't alone in this. They're amongst a variety of other victims who also need help.
Narrator: So, what kinds of signs should internet users look out for when trying to determine whether a violent online network might be targeting them or a loved one? Regardless of age...
Beccaccio: If a person becomes unusually withdrawn and depressed. They have fear of being out of reach of their phone. They are frantic when they go to their phone. They have different emotional responses when they are on their phone. They can become very upset on their phone.
Other indicators that are a little bit more outside of the electronic-device realm can be if you notice that there's carvings—there's initials or self-harm that's done. Those can be indicators that this type of abuse is happening.
If a sibling to a particularly withdrawn child comes forward and says that their sibling has done something odd to them, be aware and be cognizant of all of these different behaviors and how they can all kind of feed together and highlight this type of threat.
Beccaccio: There's a number of different things that parents and caregivers and educators can do to keep the kids safe. First and foremost, you want to have honest and open and ongoing conversations with those around you. You want to have the conversations frequently. There's a number of different resources that both the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children makes available to have these conversations with your kids.
Narrator: You can find these resources at fbi.gov/protectingkids and missingkids.org.
Beccaccio: If you're unsure where to start, primarily, you need to make sure that you're really aware of your child's online activities. Make sure that you know who your children are speaking with.
Children tend to lose themselves behind the anonymities that devices offer these days, and they think everyone is a friend that they talk to, forgetting that this person is actually a stranger and they don't know this person in real life. So, engage your child with those conversations.
And as one of those trusted adults, if a child does come to you and shares information that they have been a victim, make sure the child knows, first and foremost, that they are not in trouble and that they are brave for coming forward and making that report to you, and that their ability to talk about it and bring it to you can potentially save other children.
It's really important to understand that that individual is 100% a victim through that extensive grooming process.
Narrator: And so, it’s imperative that victims come forward and report their experiences to the FBI or their local, state, tribal authorities. You can contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (that’s 1-800-225-5324) or online at tips.fbi.gov. You can also visit fbi.gov/contact to reach out to your local FBI office.
Narrator: If you're the victim of a federal crime, the FBI's Victim Services Division also offers a wealth of supportive resources. You can visit fbi.gov/victims to learn more.
***
Cappello: We have taken a whole-of-government approach to this conduct because it affects pretty much every jurisdiction, the U.S. and abroad. We have to take that approach to combating this. We don't handle these cases any differently than we would any violent crime case or child sexual exploitation case, but knowing that there are so many different motivations for these actors in this space [and] knowing that a lot of these subjects are adults, but some of these subjects are under the age of 18, we leverage our existing relationship with state and local partners, with our foreign law enforcement partners and across different federal agencies.
Narrator: According to Beccaccio and Cappello, the demographics of alleged members of violent online networks are fairly expansive. But the FBI has observed that...
Cappello: ...a higher number of offenders are either typically in their late teenage years or in their early 20s. Overall, we've definitely seen this population skew a little bit younger. However, we've also seen perpetrators in their 40s and 50s.
Narrator: If you suspect that someone you know might be a member of a violent online network, Cappello says...
Cappello: ...you should contact law enforcement, whether that be your local FBI field office, resident agency, or local law enforcement. Here at the FBI, we've done a huge push to educate our state, local, and tribal law enforcement partners. So they are very, very aware of this threat.
We continually spread messaging on what to look for in victims and perpetrators, so it is definitely okay to contact your local law enforcement if you think you know someone involved in this criminal activity.
Narrator: To submit tips about criminal activity, you can reach the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (again, that’s 1-800-225-5324), tips.fbi.gov, or fbi.gov/contact.
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Narrator: If Beccaccio could say anything to a victim of these violent online networks, she says...
Beccaccio: ...I would tell the victim that they are not alone. They are not alone in this, and by coming forward and doing this difficult thing of reporting, they are likely freeing many, many other victims by providing that information to law enforcement. And while it can be a really difficult thing to do, it's very important so law enforcement can investigate and find all of the other victims that have been affected.
***
Narrator: This has been another production of Inside the FBI.
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On behalf of the FBI's Office of Public Affairs, thanks for tuning in.
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