Richard Densmore, A 47 year old army veteran and member The harmful criminal network known as 764He was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison on Thursday by a federal judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Densmore was arrested federal duty in late January at a home in Kalewa, Michigan, where he lived with his grandmother. He pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of a child in July.
764 and its associated splinter groups have grown at an alarming rate over the past four years. Since the network's creation in 2020 by Bradley Cadenhead, a Texas teenager, criminal cases involving it have surfaced in at least seven US states, as well as Brazil, Canada. the UKand many European nations. Cadenhead is currently serving a decade sentence in a Texas state prison for crimes related to child sexual abuse depictions.
Due to 764's ties to extremist ideologies such as neo-fascist accelerationism and sequence of nine anglesThe US Department of Justice and FBI classify 764 as “tier”./type 1“The threat of terrorism that poses a “direct threat.”[s] The national or economic security of the United States. According to a federal law enforcement official who was 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.
Assistant Attorney General at a press conference after the sentencing on Thursday matt olsen The National Security Division directly addressed 764 as an extremist threat for the first time. Olsen said, “This group seeks to inflict untold harm on children in order to further its goals of destroying civil society, inciting civil unrest, and ultimately dismantling American government institutions.”
Known to engage its members in child exploitation and distribute child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the 764 controls its victims through “extreme fear”, federal authorities said, leading to sexual exploitation of minors. Threats of objectionable photographs, personal information and public exposure are used to coerce. Abuse or suicide.
“Many members [of this network] “Their ultimate goal is to force their victims to commit suicide on livestream for the entertainment of the network 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.”