Richard Densmore, a 47-year old Army veteran and member of the noxious criminal network known as 764, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison on Thursday by a federal judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Densmore was arrested on federal charges in late January at a home in Kaleva, Michigan, where he lived with his grandmother. He pleaded guilty in July to one count of sexually exploiting a child.
764 and its associated splinter groups have grown at a breakneck speed over the past four years. Since the network’s its creation by a Texas teenager, Bradley Cadenhead, in 2020, criminal cases connected it have cropped up in at least seven US states, as well as Brazil, Canada, the UK, and multiple European nations. Cadenhead is currently serving decades in Texas state prison for offenses related to child sexual abuse imagery.
Because of 764’s ties to extremist ideologies like neofascist accelerationism and the Order of Nine Angles, the US Department of Justice and the FBI categorizes 764 as a “tier one/category 1” terrorism threat that “directly threaten[s] the national or economic security of the United States.” According to a federal law enforcement official not authorized to speak on the record, the DOJ has seen 764-related cases in every field office in the US and currently assigns about 10 such cases for investigation every week.
In a press conference after Thursday’s sentencing, assistant attorney general Matt Olsen of the National Security Division for the first time directly addressed 764 as an extremist threat. “This group seeks to do unspeakable harm to children to advance their goals of destroying civilized society, fomenting civil unrest, and ultimately collapsing the US Government institutions,” Olsen said.
Known for its members engaging in child abuse and distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), 764 controls its victims through “extreme fear,” federal officials said, using compromising photographs, personal information, and the threat of public exposure to extort minors into sexual exploitation or self-harm.
“Many members [of this network] have an end goal of forcing their victims to commit suicide on livestream for the network’s entertainment or for the perpetrator’s own sense of fame within the 764 network,” Olsen said. “It is difficult to even comprehend such shocking and inhumane violence targeted at innocent and vulnerable children.”
In the government’s sentencing memorandum, federal prosecutors asked that Densmore receive the maximum 30-year penalty for his role in creating and leading “online chat rooms where children were encouraged to cut themselves, bleed for members, and publicly engage in depraved sexual acts.”
Images of Richard Densmore presented by US prosecutors as exhibits in their sentencing recommendations.
Courtesy of the US Department of Justice
Prior government filings show that Densmore ran a 764-adjacent server called “S3wer,” where he hosted other 764 members and provided a space to groom underage victims into sexually exploiting themselves and harming themselves for his benefit, often carving his alias into their bodies in a practice common to 764 and its offshoots known as “cut-signing.” According to prosecutors, some victims are driven to commit suicide on camera for the entertainment and status of their exploiters, though no precise number of suicides connected to 764 as been given.
Using excerpts of online conversations Densmore had both with his victims and other members of 764, mostly on Discord, federal prosecutors showed Densmore’s pride at his place of influence in 764.
In September 2022, Densmore intimidated a victim into self-abuse by demonstrating he had compromising information on them and that he ran not one but two CSAM and extortion servers. “I’m the owner of cultist [another 764 Discord server] and 764. I want you to cut for me.” The user responded that they did not cut, to which Densmore responded by threatening to expose confidential information about the minor: “Don’t make daddy angry. I’ll extort you. . . . I have all your information. I own you . . . You do what I say now kitten.”
In an October 2022 Discord conversations between Densmore and another participant in his child abuse servers included by the feds in the evidence against Densmore, he bragged about his exploitation methods.
“I gaslight and make them fucked up. Then they follow me,” Densmore said. “We got a girl to cut her ass off on cam. They kill their pets too. Most will do anything for power.” When a Discord user told Densmore that there was no reason to abuse people, Densmore wrote, “They beg for it.”
Much of the evidence against Densmore was sealed by court order to protect the identities of his victims and because of the shocking nature of the evidence presented against him.
“Densmore’s phones, seized during search warrants in this case, contain some of the most heinous images and videos the undersigned counsel has had the misfortune of seeing,” assistant US attorney Adam Townshend wrote in his sentencing memorandum.
The feds also drilled down on Densmore’s seeming delight in his online notoriety. “Being Discord famous isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he messaged another user, and in another instance lamented, “Why can’t these ppl just let me be famous.”
Prior to his indictment and arrest, Densmore was initially raided by the FBI in February 2023, when the FBI found CSAM on his devices. When they raided him earlier this year, the feds claim Densmore had two cell phones hidden in an air vent in his bedroom. He’d also faced charges of a sexual offense involving a minor in the 1990s, according to a government filing from January. At one point last year, Densmore posted a video to a 764 server depicting himself burning electronics in a metal barrel outside. “Bye-bye, evidence,” Densmore says on the recording.
