A 36-year-old Ukrainian national was sentenced to 70 months in prison for participating in a string of ransomware attacks targeting various critical infrastructure operators and businesses from the middle of 2018 to late 2021, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Artem Aleksandrovych Stryzhak was involved in ransomware attacks on hospitals that disrupted patient care, government entities, a dentist office, a company in the oil and gas transportation industry and law firms. He joined various ransomware groups during his crime spree, including Nefilim and Hive, which attacked about 1,500 victims worldwide.

“Ransomware attacks like those committed by the defendant wreak enormous havoc — harming victim companies that pay millions in remediation and ransoms, preventing hospitals and other critical facilities from accessing data, and putting sensitive information in the hands of bad actors,” Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

Stryzhak pleaded guilty to multiple cybercrimes in late 2025. He was arrested in Spain in June 2024 and extradited to the United States in April 2025. Authorities are still looking for his alleged co-conspirator Volodymyr Tymoshchuk and previously announced a $11 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

Attacks involving Nefilim ransomware caused millions of dollars in losses from extortion payments and damage to victim networks, officials said. Stryzhak and his co-conspirators allegedly customized executable ransomware files for each victim, creating unique decryption keys and unique ransom notes.

The ransomware group primarily targeted companies located in the United States, Canada and Australia with more than $100 million in annual revenue, and extorted victims by threatening to publish stolen data. The crew researched companies after it broke into their networks to determine their net worth, size and contact information.

Stryzhak’s victims in the United States include an engineering consulting company based in France, an aviation industry company in New York, a chemical company in Ohio, an insurance company in Illinois, a company in the construction industry in Texas, a pet care company in Missouri and an international eyewear company. 

Stryzhak and his co-conspirators also used Nefilim ransomware to encrypt victim networks in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland, prosecutors said. 

Authorities said Stryzhak was one of the earliest Hive affiliates and, with co-conspirators, deployed the ransomware against seven victims during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This sentence concludes a years-long, multi-continent investigation into a defendant who participated in cyberattacks against Americans’ businesses and health care,” A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement. “Cybercriminals who terrorize American businesses cannot evade justice by operating from abroad or hiding behind sophisticated technology.”

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A 44-year-old Chinese national was extradited to the United States and arraigned in federal court for his alleged involvement in a sweeping investment scam network that tricked at least 174 U.S. residents out of nearly $37 million, the Justice Department said Friday. 

Zheng Zhao was extradited from the Netherlands to the United States to face a conspiracy to commit money laundering charge that could keep him in prison for 20 years. 

Prosecutors accuse Zhao and his co-conspirators of operating a global cryptocurrency investment scheme out of multiple countries, including scam centers in Cambodia. 

The cybercrime ring allegedly reached out to U.S.-based victims proactively via social media, phone calls, text messages and online dating sites to establish a deceitful relationship and build trust. Eventually, Zhao and his co-conspirators promoted cryptocurrency investments to the victims and directed them to send funds through fake sites that resembled legitimate trading platforms.

Victims were told their investments were growing in value, yet they were already transferred from U.S. bank accounts controlled by the co-conspirators to an account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, officials said. The crew allegedly converted the victim funds to Tether before transferring the assets to a digital wallet controlled in Cambodia.

The stolen funds were ultimately distributed to leaders of scam networks throughout the region, officials said.

Eight of Zhao’s co-conspirators previously pleaded guilty participating in the investment scam conspiracy, including Shengsheng He and Jingliang Su, who were sentenced to 51 months and 46 months in prison, respectively. 

Joseph Wong, a co-conspirator living in California, managed a network of money launderers in Los Angeles who registered shell companies, opened U.S. bank accounts and transferred stolen victim funds to international bank accounts.

“This case should serve as a warning to scammers in every corner of the world: there is nowhere to hide,” Todd Bratz, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service Criminal Investigation Division, said in a statement. “Secret Service investigators and our law enforcement partners remain unwavering in their commitment to identify those who operate scam centers, disrupt their financial infrastructure and bring them to justice.”

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A 45-year-old U.S. citizen pleaded guilty to running a widespread identity theft and fraud scheme that defrauded thousands of U.S. servicemembers and veterans while living in the Philippines, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Robert Wayne Boling Jr. exploited stolen personally identifiable information (PII) to compromise victims’ bank accounts and steal their money and veterans’ benefits during a five-year period ending in July 2019, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering and faces up to 40 years in prison upon sentencing. 

“Those who courageously served our nation deserve our gratitude and protection — not to become targets for criminals seeking to profit from their sacrifice,” A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement. “This defendant betrayed our country by exploiting personal information belonging to thousands of military-affiliated individuals, including elderly and disabled veterans, in a calculated scheme to steal from those who have given so much.”

Boling was arrested in May in Los Angeles after he was deported by the Philippines to the United States to face charges related to the scheme, officials said.

He was originally indicted in July 2019 along with four co-conspirators, and a warrant issued for his arrest in October 2022. Two of Bolling’s co-conspirators — Frederick Brown and Trorice Crawford — previously pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 151 months and 46 months in prison in 2021 and 2020, respectively. Other alleged co-conspirators Jongmin Seok and Allan Albert Kerr remain at large.

Prosecutors describe Boling as the “principal orchestrator of the scheme.” He received PII of thousands of military-affiliated individuals from Brown, who worked as a contractor medical records administrator for the U.S. Army in South Korea from 2010 to 2015, officials said. 

Boling used the sensitive data to compromise various accounts belonging to U.S. servicemembers and veterans. 

Officials said the crew also worked with dozens of money mules in the United States who provided bank accounts to deposit stolen funds into and sent a portion of the funds to the Philippines. 

Prosecutors said they’ve worked for years to bring Boling to the United States to face charges. He was raised in South Korea as a U.S. military dependent and lived in Angeles City, Philippines, according to the indictment.

“This defendant and his fellow fraudsters served themselves by stealing from those who selflessly serve our country,” Justin R. Simmons, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said in a statement. “We will always work tirelessly to fully prosecute those who prey on others in this manner, especially when the victims of those crimes are servicemembers.”

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A 40-year-old Nigerian national was sentenced to eight years in prison for running a years-long hacking, tax fraud and investment scheme, the Justice Department said Monday.

Chukwuemeka Victor Amachukwu enriched himself from 2019 to 2023 by hacking into U.S.-based tax preparation businesses, filing false tax returns with federal and state authorities using identities stolen from victim organizations and enticing victims to send him money for investments that did not exist, according to court records.

Amachukwu pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud in April. He was arrested in France in July 2023 and extradited to the United States in August 2025.

“Chukwuemeka Amachukwu believed he was operating safely offshore when he targeted his victims, but he has now been held to account and now faces a serious sentence for his crimes,” Jamie McDonald, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. 

“Amachukwu took part in sophisticated schemes to hack into U.S. businesses, steal and use stolen identity information of victims, and commit fraud,” McDonald added. “These crimes imposed significant harm on the victims and the public, and so it is only appropriate that the crimes also come with a significant sentence for the defendant.”

The financial penalties imposed on Amachukwu for his crimes accentuate the damage he inflicted at scale. A federal judge ordered him to pay nearly $3.65 million in restitution to his many victims and forfeit almost $10.85 million.

Prosecutors said Amachukwu and his alleged co-conspirators obtained more than $7 million in fraudulent investment schemes, about $2.5 million in fraudulent tax returns and $819,000 in fraudulent payouts from the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. 

Amachukwu, his alleged co-conspirator Kingsley Uchelue Utulu and other alleged Nigeria-based co-conspirators also stole the tax and personal data of at least 800 business customers after hacking into tax businesses based in New York, Texas and elsewhere, according to court records.

In one of those attacks, in May 2021, members of the conspiracy sent a spearfishing email to an employee of a New York-based tax preparation business, which infected the firm’s computer systems with malware.

The FBI, Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs and the U.S. Marshals Service assisted the investigation, which led to Amachukwu’s arrest and extradition from France.

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A former Army soldier responsible for a series of attacks and extortion attempts on telecom companies, including AT&T, was sentenced to 70 months in prison, the Justice Department said Friday.

Cameron John Wagenius engaged in a cybercrime spree for years, including while he was on active duty on a base in Texas. Prior to his arrest in December 2024, Wagenius attempted to sell stolen sensitive data to a foreign intelligence service and sought information online about defecting to Russia.

“Cameron Wagenius spent more than a year and a half betraying the trust placed in him as an active duty soldier by carrying out a sweeping cybercrime campaign,” said A. Tysen Duva, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement.

Wagenius, who pleaded guilty in July 2025, leaked stolen call records of President Donald Trump as part of multiple failed attempts to extort $500,000 from AT&T, Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, previously told CyberScoop. 

Authorities did not name Wagenius’ alleged victims in court filings, but said he disclosed non-content call detail records belonging to a government official and family members of another former official. AT&T in July confirmed cybercriminals accessed the company’s Snowflake environment in April and stole six months of phone and text records of “nearly all” of its customers. 

Wagenius’ and one of his co-conspirators, Connor Moucka, attempted to extort more than 10 organizations after stealing credentials and breaking into cloud platforms used by AT&T and other major companies based in the United States and abroad. 

Moucka, a Canadian extradited to the United States in March 2025, pleaded guilty in August to playing a central role in one of the most far-reaching cyberattacks of 2024 — the widespread compromise of more than 165 Snowflake customer environments, resulting in massive data theft for extortion.

Wagenius, Moucka and their alleged co-conspirator John Erin Binns, who is not presently in U.S. custody, stole billions of sensitive records and received more than $2.5 million in extortion payments combined, according to prosecutors. Victims of the attack spree included AT&T, Ticketmaster, Advance Auto Parts and Santander.

Some of the records in Wagenius’ possession at the time of his arrest were stolen in the attack spree on Snowflake customer databases, according to cybercrime researchers. Officials said Wagenius was directly involved in attempted extortion attempts targeting multiple organizations for a combined total of more than $1 million. 

The 22-year-old was ordered to pay almost $295,000 in restitution for his crimes.

“His hacking schemes were not only aimed at getting rich, he was also motivated by a desire to achieve status within criminal hacking communities,” Charles Neil Floyd, first assistant attorney for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, said in a statement. “This sentence must impose real consequences to deter him, and hopefully other would-be hackers.”

Wagenius, who identified himself as “kiberphant0m” and “cyb3rph4nt0m” on online criminal forums, used a hacking tool he helped develop called SSH Brute to steal credentials while on active duty, officials said. Wagenius and his co-conspirators threatened the victim organizations privately and in public forms, officials added.

“It is especially shocking that a member of our armed forces, sworn to defend Americans and their constitutional rights, would engage in such a violation of privacy,” W. Mike Herrington, special agent in charge of the FBI Seattle field office, said in a statement.

When federal law enforcement seized Wagenius’ devices in December 2024, they found evidence indicating he had access to thousands of stolen identification documents and large amounts of cryptocurrency. Days later, Wagenius purchased a new laptop against his commanding officer’s order, according to officials, and used it every day over a five-day period in the barracks at Fort Cavazos in Texas with VPN software to hide his identity and location.

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Five alleged leaders of the South African wing of Black Axe, a global cybercrime group with operations spanning dozens of countries, were extradited to the United States Friday to face multiple charges, the Justice Department said.

Officials accuse the five people, all originally from Nigeria, of running romance scams and advance fee scams from at least 2011 until they were all arrested in South Africa in 2021. The defendants were due Monday for initial court appearances and arraignments in a federal court in Trenton, N.J.

“Black Axe is a notoriously violent transnational criminal organization that also happens to dabble in romance scams to make money,” Stefanie Roddy, special agent in charge of the FBI Newark field office, said in a statement. “The ability of FBI Newark and our partner agencies to reach into South Africa illustrates our resolve to hold accountable any and every type of fraudster who preys on innocent victims here in the United States.”

The accused include Perry Osagiede, founder and leader of the Cape Town Zone of Black Axe; Franklyn Edosa Osagiede, the zone’s “chief ihaza” Osariemen Eric Clement, “assistant eye of the zone,” Collins Owhofasa Otughwor, the zone’s “chief eye,” and Musa Mudashiru, one of the group’s “assistant butchers.”

Prosecutors said the five defendants and their co-conspirators used fake identities to pose as a love interest, relatives, business partners or friends to trick victims into sending them money.

Many of the scams involved claims that the alleged cybercriminals needed money for work travel or to hold them over financially following a series of unfortunate events. This included requests for loans, often involving issues with a construction site, delayed inheritance, or expensive health costs for claimed relatives, according to an unsealed indictment filed in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey in 2021. 

Prosecutors said the co-conspirators also used business entities and gained access to the financial accounts of some victims to conceal the funds illegally obtained from other victims. In some cases, the alleged Black Axe members threatened to distribute sensitive photos of victims when they hesitated to send money, officials added.

The extradition follows a heightened period of law enforcement activity targeting Black Axe in multiple countries. 

Authorities arrested 34 alleged cybercriminals in Spain, including some Black Axe leaders, for adversary-in-the-middle scams such as business email compromise, money laundering and vehicle trafficking in January. 

Officials seized millions in assets, arrested 58 individuals and identified 263 suspects, including members of Black Axe, in a multi-country sting operation in August. 

Black Axe is a highly structured, hierarchical group that generates billions of dollars in criminal proceeds annually from many small-scale operations spanning dozens of countries. 

All five of the extradited individuals are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Perry Osagiede and Franklyn Osagiede are also charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Officials also charged Clement with wire fraud and Otughwor with aggravated identity theft. The combined charges carry up to 62 years in prison. 

“This case reflects the result of a years-long effort by the U.S. Secret Service and our law enforcement partners to identify, investigate, and bring to justice those who allegedly preyed on victims through sophisticated online fraud and money laundering schemes,” Craig Marech, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Newark field office, said in a statement. 

The Justice Department published additional information about the Cape Town Zone wing of Black Axe, including multiple aliases and business entities used by the group’s members, and encouraged potential victims to contact the FBI.

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Authorities extradited a 36-year-old Russian national from the Republic of Georgia under accusations of widespread bank-account takeover attacks, including a scheme to defraud two banks of more than $6.3 million, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Sergei Anatolyevich Filimonov and unnamed co-conspirators ran an extensive operation starting in November 2023 to spoof domains of banks, obtain credentials of legitimate customers and use those details to steal money from accounts with large balances, according to court records. 

Filimonov and his co-conspirators allegedly collected more than 5,000 victim login credentials to various banks, including those assigned to employees with access to a company headquartered in Atlanta and another business with offices in Cumming, Ga.

Authorities said Filimonov and his co-conspirators registered and maintained spoofed domains of banks, purchased sponsored links to direct unsuspecting victims to those domains, and stole credentials from those banks’ customers when they attempted to log into the fraudulent sites.

The alleged bank-account takeover crew also created infrastructure to store victim login credentials and tricked victims into providing additional details to bypass security controls.

Prosecutors said Filimonov and his co-conspirators caused and attempted to cause the unauthorized transfer of nearly $5.58 million from one unnamed bank in June 2024 and $735,000 from another bank in November 2024. Both banks have local branches in the Northern District of Georgia and maintain headquarters in North Carolina, according to the indictment. 

Officials previously seized the domain, which the co-conspirators allegedly used to store credentials harvested from the spoofed banking sites in December 2025. The FBI at the time said it identified at least 19 victims in the U.S. linked to the domain and put total attempted losses at about $28 million, including confirmed losses of about $14.6 million. 

Filimonov is charged with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, access device fraud conspiracy, multiple counts of bank and wire fraud, possession of unauthorized access devices and aggravated identity theft. He faces up to 175 years in prison. 

He pleaded not guilty Sept. 4 and remains detained in the Northern District of Georgia.

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A Canadian man pleaded guilty to playing a central role in one of the most far-reaching cyberattacks of 2024 — the widespread compromise of more than 165 Snowflake customer environments, resulting in massive data theft for extortion, the Justice Department said Wednesday. 

Connor Moucka earned $495,000 by extorting his victims, offering stolen data for sale online, and in one case re-extorted a victim with stolen data of a government official and members of a then-former government official’s immediate family, authorities said.

Moucka and his alleged co-conspirators John Binns and Cameron Wagenius stole billions of sensitive records and received more than $2.5 million in extortion payments combined, according to prosecutors. Victims of the attack spree included AT&T, Ticketmaster, Advance Auto Parts and Santander.

“Hiding behind a screen is no shield from justice,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said in a statement. “Moucka learned that when he was arrested just months after he began targeting U.S. companies, stealing sensitive information, and extorting victims for millions of dollars.”

Authorities arrested Moucka relatively quickly because he caused significant damage, said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B. 

“His gang went on a spree of maximizing harm, which directly correlated to maximizing the resources devoted to stopping it,” she said. 

“His behavior was bizarre throughout. Even while stealing data and extorting victims, he did many unnecessary things like threatening me because he thought I was working on his case. I was not working on his case before he threatened me,” Nixon added.

Moucka, who used several aliases online, including “Waifu,” “Judische,” “Catist” and “Ellyel8,” was arrested Oct. 30, 2024, in Kitchener, a city in the Canadian province of Ontario, at the behest of U.S. authorities. He was extradited to the United States in March 2025.

Moucka and his co-conspirators used stolen credentials to access the data storage platform’s customers’ accounts en masse. Records of more than 100 million people were exposed by the data theft campaign, including call and text history records, banking and other financial information, payroll records, government ID numbers and other personally identifiable data. 

Officials said victim companies bore more than $9.5 million in losses combined, not including losses attributable to their respective customers. 

Moucka’s threats and re-extortion tactics were calculated and predatory, and his actions did real harm to his victims, be they companies targeted for theft and extortion or the millions of everyday people who are their customers,” W. Mike Herrington, special agent in charge of the FBI Seattle field office, said in a statement.

Researchers said Moucka and his co-conspirators are all associated with The Com, a sprawling cybercriminal network of minors and young adults who engage in violence, extortion, sextortion and various forms of cybercrime.

“His legacy is one of failure. He extorted and then scammed his victims by not deleting the data, casting doubt on all future pay-or-leak extortion gangs,” Nixon said. 

“The pay-or-leak business model was popularized by him and his gang,” and his claims of data deletion were a lie, she added. “With copycat gangs, defenders grapple with the uncertainty of whether the threat actors are honest.”

Moucka pleaded guilty to computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and a related conspiracy. He is scheduled for sentencing Oct. 27 and faces up to 32 years in prison.

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A 41-year-old Ghanaian national was sentenced to 85 months in prison for stealing more than $10 million from mostly older, lonely and vulnerable victims via romance scams, the Justice Department said Tuesday. 

Derrick Van Yeboah was a longtime and high-ranking member of a criminal organization primarily based in Ghana linked to more than $100 million stolen from romance scams and business email compromises, officials said. Van Yeboah served as a “sakawa boy,” impersonating fake romantic partners and directly interacting with victims online from February 2015 to October 2024.

“Romance scammers do not simply steal money — they weaponize trust,” Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. 

Van Yeboah was arrested in Ghana in June 2025, acting on a request from the Justice Department, and extradited to the United States two months later. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and agreed to forfeit $10.15 million in fraudulent proceeds as part of a plea agreement in March.

Authorities said they identified at least 20 of Van Yeboah’s victims, noting that some were deceived into sending their money to the criminal organization, creating companies and using those entities to unwittingly launder funds from other victims. 

Victims include a woman from Delaware who either sent or laundered $1.9 million, a woman from Ohio who sent or laundered $2.3 million and another woman who sent or laundered about $1 million. Van Yeboah also tricked a North Carolina man to send $123,000, claiming he needed a loan to pay for his mother’s funeral expenses and to remove imaginary gold and diamonds from storage in Italy, according to court records.

Officials said Van Yeboah received a substantial amount of money from his criminal acts. He told pretrial services his assets include a house worth $1.5 million and jewelry worth $515,000. When he was arrested, Ghanaian police found him in possession of two vehicles stolen from the United States and Canada.

“Victims lost large portions of their life savings, money they had counted on for retirement. They were emotionally devastated to learn that the personas they had been talking to every day, personas who claimed to be in love with them, were in fact frauds,” Clayton wrote in a pre-sentencing letter to the court. 

Van Yeboah’s conduct was cruel, and he fully understood the financial and emotional harm he was causing to his victims, he added. 

“Van Yeboah’s conduct was far from an aberration. Van Yeboah engaged in the fraud scheme for nine years. It wasn’t isolated conduct; it wasn’t a blip,” Clayton wrote. “Indeed, it appears to be the only real job Van Yeboah has ever had. Day after day, for years, he targeted vulnerable victims, lied to them, and stole from them.”

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An Armenian national who was extradited from Ukraine to the United States last year pleaded guilty to participating in a series of attacks in 2019 and 2020 involving Ryuk ransomware, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Karen Serobovich Vardanyan pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud and extortion. He agreed to pay nearly $1.2 million million in restitution and faces up to 15 years in jail.

The 34-year-old admitted to participating in cybercrime from November 2019 to April 2020 when he and his co-conspirators deployed Ryuk ransomware against three U.S.-based organizations while living in Ukraine and Russia.

Vardanyan’s victims include a Michigan-based company that paid a ransom of nearly $1.2 million in January 2020, a Watsonville, Oregon-based technology company that was attacked in December 2019 and a Texas-based school breached in February 2020.

Prosecutors previously accused Vardanyan and his co-conspirators — Ukrainian nationals Oleg Nikolayevich Lyulyava and Andrii Leonydovich Prykhodchenko, and Armenian national Levon Georgiyovych Avetisyan — of illegally accessing computer networks to deploy Ryuk ransomware on hundreds of compromised servers and workstations between March 2019 and September 2020.

Ryuk ransomware was prevalent in 2019 and 2020, infecting thousands of victims globally across the private sector, state and local municipalities, local school districts and critical infrastructure, including a wave of attacks on U.S. hospitals.

Victims of Ryuk ransomware attacks include Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Universal Health Services, Electronic Warfare Associates, a North Carolina water utility and multiple U.S. newspapers.

Ryuk ransomware operators extorted victim companies by demanding ransom payments in Bitcoin in exchange for decryption keys. Justice Department officials said Vardanyan and his co-conspirators received about 1,160 bitcoins — valued at more than $15 million at the time — in ransom payments from victim companies.

Vardanyan, as part of his guilty plea, also acknowledged that his conviction will have immigration consequences resulting in removal from the United States after serving his sentence. 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon has yet to schedule his sentencing.

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A San Antonio man who sexually exploited children while leading 8884, an offshoot of the notorious violent extremist collective 764, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in federal court Wednesday, the Justice Department said. 

Alexis Aldair Chavez began associating with 764 as a child in 2022 when a co-conspirator introduced him to 7997, one of many 764 offshoots affiliated with the Com. The sprawling nihilistic network of thousands of people, typically between 11 and 25 years old, seek to foster social unrest by destroying civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of children and other vulnerable populations.

The 19-year-old, also known as “Zack” and “Zack8884,” attempted to coerce a girl to commit suicide and blackmailed another girl into self-mutiliation, animal torture and illicit content production in late 2023, according to court records. He later worked with multiple co-conspirators and blackmailed some of his victims to coerce other girls to degrade themselves on camera and produce child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Chavez was arrested and has been detained without bail since October 2024. He pleaded guilty to multiple crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children in December 2025 and faced up to 60 years in prison for racketeering, distribution and possession of CSAM.

“Chavez’s crimes reveal the ruthless exploitation and manipulation at the core of nihilistic violent extremist groups,” John A. Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement. 

“These organizations target children as part of their broader mission to spread terror. These groups ultimately seek nothing less than the destruction of our society,” he added. “The National Security Division will use every resource at its disposal to identify and prosecute 764-linked criminality and to protect the most innocent among us from these predators.”

The indictment filed against Chavez in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas details a series of horrifying crimes he committed with co-conspirators and some of his victims. 

Prosecutors said Chavez and a co-conspirator coerced a girl to cut her tongue, and torture and kill a cat on a live video call in late 2023. He and co-conspirators also, that same month, groomed and extorted several other girls to commit self harm and degrade themselves on camera.

Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, told CyberScoop the sentence is appropriate even if people understandably dislike imprisoning young people. 

“In this space, a certain personality profile is highly predictive of who will risk a prison sentence like this: an obsession with maximizing harm,” she said. 

“Reoffending after release is a huge problem. All major global hacking incidents from the Com are done by serial reoffenders — all obsessed with harmfulness, some graduated from the 764 sextortion space,” Nixon added.

Too many jurisdictions are naive in how they handle cases involving members or associates of the Com, allowing these criminals to go home to parents who won’t supervise them, she said.

Officials pressed on this in their reaction to Chavez’s sentencing as well. “Parents need to know what their children are doing online and must stay engaged, ask difficult questions, and not fall into the trap of believing their child is ‘just playing games’ or ‘just talking with their friends,’” Justin R. Simmons, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said in a statement. 

“There is darkness present within many people in this world that want nothing more than to see the United States and western civilization fail. There is no limit to the actions these individuals will take to accomplish that goal, including torturing and abusing children,” Simmons added.

Chavez, who was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution and serve lifetime supervised release, joins other 764 members already serving long sentences for similar crimes. Bradley Chance Cadenhed, who founded 764 as a 15-year-old in 2021, was arrested later that year and sentenced to 80 years in prison in 2023. 

When the FBI executed a search warrant at Chavez’s residence in July 2024, prosecutors said he came out the backdoor and threw his phone over a neighbor’s fence in an attempt to hide evidence.

Chavez’s sentencing follows a period of heightened law enforcement activity, which has netted arrests of multiple alleged 764 leaders and members. Some of the alleged 764 members arrested since 2025  include: Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, Baron Cain Martin, Tony Christopher Long, Erik Lee Madison, Zachary Sweeney and Aaron Corey. 

“True rehabilitation is the best outcome, but no one knows how,” Nixon said. 

“The total number of offenders who fit this harm-obsessed profile is vanishingly small. Giving them maximum sentences won’t overflow jails,” she added. 

Law enforcement and judges have to be realistic about what it takes to prevent the victimization of children, and handing down lifelong or lengthy prison sentences strikes the right balance between the rights of the offender and society, Nixon said.

FBI officials and agents who track these offenders and gather evidence on their crimes draw similar conclusions. 

“Nothing is more abhorrent than those who prey on children and other vulnerable members of our society and this defendant will pay a steep price for doing just that,” Coult Markovsky, acting assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said in a statement.

“This sentencing demonstrates the FBI’s unwavering resolve to identify, hunt down, investigate, and prosecute criminals like Chavez who prey on children through violent online networks, including 764, and orchestrate horrific, unspeakable acts of exploitation and violence,” Daniel Faith, special agent in charge of the FBI San Antonio field office, said in a statement. 

“These predators use social media, messaging apps, gaming platforms, chat rooms, and video services to groom vulnerable children,” Faith added. “Staying engaged in your child’s online life, maintaining open communication, recognizing the warning signs, and reporting suspicious online activity to law enforcement are critical to stopping these offenders.”

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