The Origins of 764
Recent arrests shine new light on the cult’s murky origins and its connection to Order of Nine Angles
26-year-old Texas resident Kaleb Merritt was already serving a whopping 33-year prison sentence for grooming, kidnapping and raping a 12-year-old girl in Virginia. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to federal charges of leading a child exploitation enterprise connected to an internet-based Satanic cult called CVLT.
Merritt, aka “O9A.evil”, was charged alongside several co-defendants – Clint Borge, 42, of Hawaii, Rohan Rane, 29, of France, and Collin Walker, aka “Wrath”, 24, of New Jersey. All men are accused of being key members of CVLT, a cult-like online group that targeted children online, coercing and/or extorting them into committing sadistic acts such as sexual degradation and self-harm on camera.
The DOJ had this to say:
“This guilty plea exposes the depravity of CVLT, a criminal enterprise that systematically targeted vulnerable children, coerced them into producing abuse material, and threatened to destroy their lives if they resisted. Merritt was one of the online administrators who made CVLT’s monstruous machinery of child exploitation run.”
But the charging documents against the four men reveal more than just their horrific crimes against children. They also shine new light on the origins of CVLT’s successor – the infamous 764 network – and its link to the Satanic accelerationist cult Order of Nine Angles.
What is 764?
The 764 network is the term used to describe a group of interconnected, decentralized online groups that weaponize digital platforms like Discord, Telegram, and Roblox to target and exploit underage users. Members of such groups locate vulnerable, unsupervised youth online and then groom and radicalize them, often sharing violent content such as gore, neo-Nazi content, animal torture, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in order to desensitize them.
The abuse then escalates in one of two ways – they either coerce or extort the child to perform sexual or violent acts on camera under threat of retaliation, or they turn the child into an abuser within the network. Victims of extortion are often subjected to escalating demands such as killing pets or suicide. Victims groomed into abusers are given instruction on how to target and exploit other kids, and sometimes even goaded into committing acts of terrorism such as stabbings and school shootings on livestream for the group.
The FBI has used the term “Nihilistic Violent Extremism” (NVE) to describe such groups in order to differentiate them from racially or politically motivated extremist groups. I’ve previously used the terms “Militant Accelerationism” or “Satanic Accelerationism” to describe these specific brands of extremism, and I don’t find the reference to nihilism particularly useful. Far better descriptors of the driving forces behind these concepts are misanthropy – the hatred of humanity – and accelerationism – the desire to fuel the total collapse of society.
But a name is just a name. It’s far more important to understand how these groups came into existence in the first place.
It might come as a surprise to learn that 764, the specific group that would eventually morph and evolve into a sordid network of extreme child abusers, was founded by a 15-year-old Texas boy named Bradley Cadenhead. While many are quick to attempt to find deeper meaning in the number “764”, the naming of the group is actually superficial – It was named after the first three digits of Cadenhead’s zip code in Stephenville, Texas.
Bradley Cadenhead had a troubled upbringing. He had a hard time fitting in at school, eventually developing a morbid interest in extreme gore at an early age. Cadenhead has claimed that he met other individuals with the same twisted interests while playing the online game Minecraft, quickly finding himself immersed in online chatrooms where he became increasingly radicalized.
Cadenhead was eventually arrested and, at only 18 years old, handed a jaw-dropping 80-year sentence. In an interview with Beneath the Surface News, the officer in charge of the Cadenhead case stated, “To be perfectly honest, the child pornography is probably the least egregious crime he has committed; he is a scary kid. His whole thing is about online manipulation.”
Cadenhead’s case file contains a scanned cover letter with bright pink words warning future parole boards about the potential consequences of his early release:
“THIS DEFENDANT IS DANGEROUS.”
Earlier this year, Cadenhead’s attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus, imploring the court to reassess his sentence. The motion was denied.
But Cadenhead has been willing to chat with a colleague of mine in recent months. Though I’m not at liberty to publish his exact words at this time, he did give a detailed account of his childhood, specifically, his troubles fitting in with his peers and his penchant for extreme content at an early age – content which he alleged his father indulged in alongside him.
More surprisingly, Cadenhead claimed ignorance of his affiliation with the satanic accelerationist cult Order of Nine Angles (O9A), stating he had never even heard of the group when he founded 764 in 2021.
Why is this so surprising?
Since 764 was first identified by the FBI in 2022, people have linked the group to O9A, with some going as far as to call it an O9A offshoot. But the evidence to support a direct connection has remained murky for some time. It took several years of research to gain a partial understanding of this link.
Conversations with former associates, chat logs from extremist forums, and bits of information obtained in recent charging documents have made the picture somewhat clearer and corrected the record on some initial misunderstandings, though there are still many puzzle pieces left to find.
Perhaps Cadenhead will sit down for a proper interview and answer some of our more pressing questions soon. Until then, here is a summary of what we have put together through good old-fashioned open-source research.
The Origins of CVLT
In the 2010s, extremist groups were festering on online platforms like Telegram and Discord. These new groups differed dramatically from the typical early internet extremist groups, which predominantly relied on organized web forums and email groups to congregate and collectivize. Now with the ability to create individualized chat rooms with ease, such groups quickly began to cross-pollinate - White nationalist groups fused with pagan neo-Nazi groups, accelerationists and even Satanists.
Adding to the chaos was the growing influence of “Com” - a sprawling interconnected network of cybercriminal communities where extortion, fraud and hacking are used as a way to harass vulnerable targets and sow discord in society at large. As these groups began to fuse, a decentralized network filled with Frankenstein-hybrid extremists became the new norm.
Bowl Patrol was one such notable group of Telegram and Discord miscreants who took white nationalism to an extreme - worshipping mass shooters like Dylann Roof, who murdered 9 black congregants in a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015. The name “Bowl Patrol” was a reference to Roof’s bowl-cut hairstyle. Bowl Patrol would eventually morph and evolve into even more extreme communities like Terrorgram.
Naturally, Bowl Patrol members were obsessed with extreme gore and violence, and the associated chat groups crossed over with other communities fond of sharing gore and edgy extremist views. One such gore group called 6996 was influential to a lot of early satanic accelerationist movements and Com groups, including 764 and the 764-linked Eastern European Satanic murder cult, MKY.
As these groups converged, another community known as Team Rocket became a prominent hangout for extremists from Bowl Patrol and various gore groups and eventually became home to the O9A pedophiles who would go on to create CVLT.
A source who was formerly involved in Team Rocket around 2019 alleged that two Niners (the colloquial term for O9A adherents) active in these Discord servers would coerce young girls to perform live “cut shows” in the video channels, instructing them to carve their usernames into their bodies. One of the two Niners used the username “Wrath”, making it likely the person in question was Collin Walker.
It is well known that many notorious O9A-linked extremists as well as future members of 764 participated in Team Rocket. Such individuals include Richard Densmore, Angel Almeida, and even Bradley Cadenhead himself. As previously noted, these individuals were already coercing victims to self-harm on camera and create “blood signs” (writing on walls or sheets of paper in blood) in addition to sexually explicit content.
CVLT escalated this abuse to involve extortion, threatening to ruin their victims’ lives if they refused to comply. Extorting victims into acts of extreme violence and sexual abuse was a notable deviation from the prior Extortion Com model, which was largely focused on “fan-signing” (writing an abuser’s name on their foreheads or a piece of paper as a symbol of ownership) and acts of humiliation such as licking toilet seats and other disgusting and embarrassing acts.
According to the DOJ, Merritt and his co-defendants founded CVLT and operated it as a child exploitation enterprise. This interpretation of their cult allowed the DOJ to hit them with RICO charges. But CVLT was more than that. It was a new model of sadistic abuse, fusing O9A Satanism and child sexual abuse with the extortion tactics popularized in Com.
Splinters began to form spontaneously as other members of the extremist landscape tried to create their own versions of CVLT. One such group, Greggy’s Cult, was also the precipice for several recent arrests. Five men were arrested and charged with being founding members of Greggy’s Cult and were similarly hit with child exploitation enterprise charges. Two of those men, Zachary Dosch, aka “Moist Nigerian”, and Rumaldo Valdez, aka “Duck”, were key members that contributed to the creation of 764.
The Rise of 764
According to Bradley Cadenhead, he first encountered an individual on Minecraft who introduced him to Team Rocket and CVLT. This person is likely Zachary Dosch, however, some sources also claim that Rohan Rane played a key role in helping Cadenhead create 764. Cadenhead participated in the extortion and abuse committed by Greggy’s Cult and, according to sources within these groups, took several members with him into his first 764 channel, which was called “764 Cult”.
764 adopted all the same methods and aesthetics of CVLT: an emphasis on Satanism and extortion, self-harm, blood-signs or fan-signs, and committing degrading sexual acts and violence against animals.
The CVLT co-defendants weren’t discrete about their affiliation with O9A. Merritt went by the username O9A.evil and Walker went by O9A.wrath. It stands to reason that the other members were also closely connected with O9A’s unique brand of satanic accelerationism, especially considering CVLT’s emphasis on Satanic aesthetics, self-harm and writing in blood.
As you can see, the connection between 764 and O9A is quite nuanced. Cadenhead’s claim that he didn’t know anything about O9A when he founded 764 is difficult to believe, considering he was immersed in a group chat full of prolific Niners for some time prior. Then again, it’s hard to imagine an incentive for Cadenhead to lie about such a relatively trivial detail now that his fate is sealed.
While it may or may not be true that Cadenhead had no direct knowledge of O9A, the flow down of sinister influence is quite obvious. And when you consider O9A’s emphasis on infiltrating and subverting extremist movements and driving its members to commit evil acts, things start to make a lot more sense.
It’s not my intention to defend O9A’s twisted pathos in any way. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide how much culpability is justified when considering its influence over the 764 network.
Sources of Misunderstanding
Establishing a link between 764 and O9A is easily justified by pointing out how the O9A influence flowed down from CVLT, but the common assertion that 764 is an offshoot or “nexion” of O9A is patently false.
In reality, many journalists and even academics were misinformed in their initial analyses of 764 and its connection to O9A. This resulted in the proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theories – some of which were actually exploited by O9A cultists to obfuscate their influence over these groups.
The first published connection between O9A and 764 was made after the arrest of 21-year-old Angel Almeida of Queens, New York on child exploitation charges. The court documents detail how police were tipped off to Almeida’s social media presence in 2022, leading them to unearth troves of evidence linking him to the Order of Nine Angles and implicating him in sex crimes against children.
An article written by The Guardian in 2023 stated that Almeida’s arrest led the FBI to discover the existence of 764, citing only “sources with knowledge” for this information. But Almeida’s crimes against his minor victims began in 2020, the year prior to 764’s creation. Furthermore, the superseding indictment cited in the article makes no reference to 764 by name.
Further digging revealed an even deeper connection. Almeida was notably active in Team Rocket and also very likely active in Bowl Patrol, given his obsession with Dylann Roof. All of this might seem odd given that Almeida is a non-white Hispanic. In fact, it’s been said by sources familiar with the CVLT group dynamic that Almeida was widely dismissed as a “larper” and that Bradley Cadenhead refused to allow him to join 764 on account of his race.
There’s a good explanation for all of this that became evident during his court proceedings - Almeida is irredeemably insane. Almeida would become the first (and so far only) known arrestee in the satanic accelerationist network to be adjudicated mentally unfit for trial and permanently incarcerated in a BOP mental health facility. Regardless, in Almeida’s mind, he was on the path to becoming a living God.
Almeida had an intense fascination with O9A. Unlike many recent cases of young offenders who are only superficially interested in the aesthetics of the cult, Almeida was deeply committed to learning the O9A’s philosophical praxis and practicing occult rituals to grow his rank within The Order.
O9A is a unique cult because it focuses on individualism and decentralization. There is no formal leadership or oversight; anyone can purchase the literature online and embark on their left-hand path journey to immortality.
Many Niners rebut the claim that Almeida was part of the cult by arguing he wasn’t worthy, mainly on account of his race and his acts of child abuse, which is generally forbidden in O9A literature. But the simple fact is that anyone can purchase the materials online and initiate themselves into the cult, under their own interpretation of its praxis, with no one to check them. That is how O9A founder David Myatt designed the cult, and that’s exactly what Almeida chose to do.
Sources familiar with Almeida claim that he considered his abuse - which involved coercing young female victims into committing acts of sexual exploitation and self-harm on video - as a ritual to an O9A Dark God called Shaitan. When investigators searched Almeida’s home, they found an alarming amount of evidence demonstrating his commitment to O9A.
One item retrieved from Almeida’s home appeared to be a blood oath on a sheet of paper. It featured several distinct O9A sigils smudged with blood surrounding an image of the Zodiac killer. At the bottom was a blood covenant signed by “SATANAE MANIBUS”.
The moniker Satanae Manibus belongs to a man named Jarod Choate who held a leadership role in an O9A splinter group called Satanic Front. According to members of that group, which has long been at odds with the classic O9A adherents, Almeida ordered the paper pre-signed off of the Satanic Front eBay store (though who the blood belonged to is uncertain).
Satanic Front leadership has used this explanation to distance their group from Almeida, though as previously noted, the individualized nature of such groups allows for anyone to claim allegiance. I’ve found myself in many heated arguments with Satanic Front leadership on this particular point.
Almeida also purchased a variety of propaganda connected to Satanic Front and its sister group, Tempel ov Blood, which have become increasingly distinguished from the classic O9A in recent years. In addition to having all varieties of O9A propaganda in his posession, he was also found to possess a variety of other Satanic literature indicating an interest in general chaos magick.
Almeida was an ethnically non-white neo-Nazi who worshipped Dylann Roof and identified with a number of fringe satanic movements. He was one of the first of many contradictory hybrids to crop up in the new extremist landscape that thrived on Discord and Telegram. There would be many more like him coming.
The issue is that, in 2022, very little was understood about the extremist landscape that molded the clinically insane Angel Almeida into a deranged cultist. The specific dynamics of groups like Bowl Patrol and Team Rocket and their relationship with CVLT, 764 and O9A eluded researchers and law enforcement alike for a very long time.
One of the reasons for this is the forced reliance on dubious sources, hearsay, rumors, and circumstantial evidence. Information often comes from sources formerly involved in the extremist landscape who are either relying on memory or are simply mistaken.
There have been several examples of researchers and other sources taking information posted on the website “Doxbin” – a pastebin-style website designed for hosting and sharing personal information and often used by members of Com to harass and intimidate victims – and treating the information as factual without any further thought. In reality, Doxbin entries are notoriously wrong and often intentionally created by the subject of the purported dox to mislead researchers, law enforcement officials, and rivals within Com.
Now that the arrests are pouring in (and they are doing so quickly), a close analysis of the charging documents often sheds new light on the arrestees and, in some cases, corrects former misunderstandings. For example, the username “Duck” was widely reported by outlets like The Guardian and Wired as belonging to Angel Almeida, however, the charging documents against members of Greggy’s Cult reveal this person to be Rumaldo Valdez. The assumption that Duck was Almeida (who actually used the names “Gorebutcher” and “Necropedocel”) presumably originated from an incorrect Doxbin entry.
Then there’s the issue of former extremists being used as sources by journalists and academics. This is a tricky problem. On the one hand, such sources are often invaluable in providing the information needed to identify bad actors and understand the dynamics of the groups. On the other hand, they are prone to memory errors and, in some cases, will willfully lie and deceive to cover for their friends. The information obtained from such sources should always be vetted, and if the information is published, it should be noted as coming from a former extremist and presented as hearsay.
Luckily, with the huge surge of arrests in the satanic accelerationist landscape, we now have official court documents to straighten the record on many things. Information obtained in such documents can generally be considered as objective fact, far more reliable than hearsay and Doxbin entries. There are many cases, for example, of 764 members reusing usernames. During formal investigations, the usernames are analyzed alongside information subpoenaed from social media platforms – such as emails and IP addresses – to provide certainty of ownership.
In some cases, like in the case of the CVLT and Greggy’s Cult arrests, court documents give us a unique glimpse into the history of the harmful online groups that have since morphed into one of the greatest threats facing children all over the world in the 21st century.
Good article. I do have to make a minor nitpick though, since Shaitan is simply the Arabic name for Satan or a generic devil. The other name or word is Iblis. David Myatt would have been very familiar with the Arabic names, especially since many Muslims say “a’udhu billah amin ash Shaitan ar-rajim” along with the basmallah (bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim”. The use of Arabic, Latin, and Greek are very strange in the ONA. They don’t use Welsh despite being founded in the Welsh Marshes. Just something I noticed.