Leaders of 764, global child sextortion group, arrested and charged

Two alleged leaders of the child sextortion group 764 were arrested and charged for directing and distributing child sexual abuse material, the Department of Justice said Thursday. Leonidas Varagiannis, 21, and Prasan Nepal, 20, face charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. 

Varagiannis, also known as “War,” and Nepal, also known as “Trippy,” are accused of running a core subgroup of 764, known as “764 Inferno,” that facilitated the grooming, manipulation and extortion of minors. 

Varagiannis, a U.S. citizen who joined 764 in late 2023, according to an affidavit unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was arrested in Greece on Tuesday. Nepal, who has been involved with 764 since the group’s inception in late 2020, was arrested in North Carolina on April 22, officials said. 

The Justice Department describes 764 as a “network of nihilistic violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct in the United States and abroad, seeking to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors.”

The group’s goals include “social unrest and the downfall of the current world order, including the U.S. government,” officials said. Members of 764 are affiliated with “The Com,” a global collective of loosely associated groups that commit financially motivated, sexual and violent crimes, according to threat researchers.

Nepal and Varagiannis allegedly ordered victims to commit acts of self-harm and engaged in psychological torment and extreme violence against minors. The men are also accused of instructing other members how to recruit potential victims, threaten them and engage in extortion tactics to produce sexually harmful material.

The two men are accused of exploiting at least eight minor victims, some as young as 13 years old, across multiple jurisdictions. 

“Members of 764, both individually and as a group, methodically targeted vulnerable populations, including minor girls with mental health challenges, and attempted to socially engineer them, gain their trust, and then groom them to share private information and intimate visual depictions of themselves engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” Andrew Rust, special agent with the FBI, said in the affidavit.

Members of 764 used private information and images of victims to coerce them to provide more extreme and degrading content. This included “images of the victims cutting the names of 764 members into their bodies, setting themselves on fire, abusing their pets or sibilings, or even suicide,” the FBI said in the affidavit.

The FBI and Justice Department also accuse 764 members of engaging in property destruction, physical abuse of animals, and physical assaults on people, including stabbings and attempted murder. 

“These defendants are accused of orchestrating one of the most heinous online child exploitation enterprises we have ever encountered — a network built on terror, abuse and the deliberate targeting of children,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “We will find those who exploit and abuse children, prosecute them, and dismantle every part of their operation.”

Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, concurred with the Justice Department’s assessment that Nepal and Varagiannis were key players in the group’s operations. 

“Com activity is mostly driven by a small number of actors. Arresting them disrupts the whole ecosystem — not just in violent sextortion but also fraud and hacking,” Nixon said.

“It’s just like violent street gangs,” she added. “In general, Com gangs commit fraud for money and then sex crimes for fun. The only place for them is jail.”