On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, attempting to thwart the peaceful transition of power. One of those insurrectionists, Riley Williams, stole* then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop*. According to her ex, “she intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.” But Williams was also part of an international, abusive extortion network.

*Williams admitted to the theft in a group chat but was acquitted of the charge by a jury.

Strong content advisory: Graphic imagery, injuries and descriptions of self-harm, suicide and organized sexual abuse. Unicorn Riot’s three year investigation helps the public understand this dangerous group which preys on children – however the material that follows may be inappropriate and harmful for some readers and must be approached with care.

Note on how we are defining extremism: The ‘cvlt’ views the ultimate manifestation of their movement as embracing the most edgy viewpoints it can–whether Satanic, Nazi or sexual. Chasing that aesthetic has led them to embrace what would be traditionally considered the trappings of Right Wing extremism.

See our Far-Right Investigations Desk for more stories and context

In February of 2021, a 21-year-old Texas man named Kaleb Merritt traveled to Virginia, where he abducted and raped a 12-year-old girl after meeting her online. According to investigators, he set up a camp in the wooded area behind her house and coerced her into leaving with him. And, according to posts on Telegram, he livestreamed her rape in a private chat room. Yet, the girl, who is clearly a victim, was so well-groomed that during her testimony she said she wanted to run away with him because she loved him.

On April 12, 2021, a 17-year-old German boy named Nino Luciano murdered a Jewish woman in Romania on a live stream. Before he slit her throat, another boy, who was watching online, screamed excitedly, “Show me! Show me!” Luciano told the Sibiu police that he was intent on joining a Nazi organization and that this act of courage was to be a part of his initiation. After the murder he stated in the Telegram chat, “I feel like God. I can decide who lives and who dies.” Luciano, who grew up in the foster care system, had multiple tattoos including a swastika, “764,” and “Necro” written on his forearm at the time of his arrest.

In May of 2023, an Erath County teenager named Bradley Cadenhead was given an 80 year sentence for distributing child pornography. The lead investigator, Lt. Jeremy Lanier, told Beneath the Surface, “The evidence presented at the punishment hearing showed that the defendant possessed images of young children not only being sexually abused, but also choked, beaten, suffocated and grievously injured.”

On December 13, 2023, a grand jury indicted 18-year-old Kalana Limkin on several counts of possessing child pornography. In the indictment, the FBI mentions his link to the extremist group Order of the Nine Angles (o9a) —a neo-Nazi group started in the 1970s that is associated with child pornography and certain strains of satanism and violent, online far-right Islamism. Court documents reveal that one of Limkin’s victims told agents that “Limkin shared his screen and showed” them “child pornography of a 5 year old girl being raped” in order to groom and desensitize them.

On February 27, 2024, Canadian police in Lethbridge announced that they had arrested, and are charging, a 14-year-old with making and distributing child pornography, noting that he “had become entrenched in extremist ideologies propagated by a number of online groups.” There is also a charge for making and possessing explosives. Canada’s CBC broadcaster interviewed the father of one of the teen victims of these rings that month.

All of these individuals are associated with an online movement spawned by a group named CVLT that originated on Discord and Telegram in 2019. The group was known for sadistically grooming and sexually exploiting children by creating an environment of unequal power dynamics. They would hunt for victims on other sites such as Instagram, Snapchat and Omegle–luring the vulnerable into an emotionally charged trap.

Although there are Nazi and Satanic ties to the CVLT movement and related phenomena, most members seem to be motivated by the inherent extremeness that represents personal and in-group identity, versus genuine belief in racist ideology. Gaining notoriety and clout by extorting the vulnerable was, and still is, the name of the game. Being the ultimate edgelord crowns you king. And desensitizing both victims and members makes it easier for the perpetrators to motivate further acts of sexploitation and violence.

Unicorn Riot spoke with child psychologist Emma Cardeli, Associate Director of Clinical Services for a violence prevention program at Boston Children’s Hospital, about what could be driving the phenomenon. “The ideological piece is not what’s driving this. It’s the icing on the cake, so to speak.” Rather, it’s important to pay attention to “the clustering of all of these high-risk behaviors at once.” By nature, youth “try things on for size at this stage of development.” Add to that a history of trauma or rejection, plus a “strong need to belong, to connect, or to matter,” and you get the potential for high-risk behaviors as a means of getting those identity needs met. The source of trauma or felt rejection could be “family instability,” Cardeli explained, “but [it] isn’t always. Sometimes it’s school or other institutions that are important sources of connection and belonging in the life of a child.”

CVLT went on to produce multiple splinter groups referred to as ‘Coms.’ Coms are online communities of kids that chat, engage in e-sex, and participate in doxxing and extortion rings for clout. They all share common participants and the same destructive behaviors, including a penchant for gore, violence and child porn.

Unicorn Riot spent the last three years observing CVLT’s chat rooms and growth. Here’s some of what we saw.

The Beginning

The first CVLT group was created by a French boy named Rohan. 

Rohan used Instagram and other social media sites to lure victims into Discord and Telegram, where he would manipulate them into posting sexually explicit content that would then become a driver for further extortion. He would often have them cut his name into their bodies to denote that they were his slaves – a practice known as ‘fansigning.’ And he trained his followers to do the same. The branding of victims also helped them to establish a following, making it easier to sell their content over time.

Rohan described his server on Reddit as “dark and sadistic,” where “slaves cut my name on their body willingly as a way of masochistic tendencies. Some of them taste themselves with my name engraved onto them. I have videos. Everything is legal. Think of it as extreme BDSM. I am the leader and the founder of the cult. My ultimate goal is to create an endless supply of masochistic people to satisfy my sadism and my cult is existing for that very reason.” Except that a lot of what they did wasn’t legal.

Kaleb Merritt was one of Rohan’s initial followers. He went by multiple user names in the group including eterrorist, o9a, and evil. And he became quite proficient at grooming. 

The cult also livestreamed multiple teens committing suicide. One was by hanging and another by pills swallowed in a bathtub. They further coerced some of their victims into streaming the killing of their pets.

In regards to one suicide video, Rohan stated on Reddit, “The girl that killed herself in my cult, the video is available because it was recorded by one of my members. You should know that its a mix of both extremely masochistic and extremely sadistic people in my cult.”

A splinter group known as 764 added more gore to the mix. Bradley Cadenhead was the founder of this server and he went by the username Felix or Brad764; he’s since been sentenced to 80 years in prison. In addition to child pornography and Nazi symbolism, Cadenhead had a penchant for graphic violence, with his chat group featuring a constant stream of animals being mutilated and people being killed. Most were edits of existing content – but some of them were not. He extorted several victims into livestreaming themselves killing their pets.

Cardeli told Unicorn Riot that “traumatic experiences typically impact beliefs about power and control.” When you’ve experienced trauma as a child, you “learn early on who has power and who doesn’t…and strategies for getting power, positive or negative. Trauma exposure is likely contributing to getting pulled into this cult, as either a victim or a perpetrator.” Either way, “vulnerabilities are preyed upon.”

CSAM in Private Chats

Their growth in popularity fueled a foray into further fanaticism, which led to the creation of private chat rooms on Telegram where they would ultimately sell and distribute child pornography. In one such room there were images of young boys in front of swastika flags and prepubescent children being forced to engage in various sex acts.

Some appeared to be as young as 5 or 6. There were also chat messages claiming it was okay to rape underage white girls in order to preserve the white race. In one chat, a kid offered to sell photos of his younger sister–but the buyer said 15 was too old and that he needed them to be between 4 and 7 years of age.

These rooms were sometimes easily accessed by simply clicking on invite links, and some even blatantly read “child porn.”

The group became so notorious that the white supremacist group White Lives Matter started utilizing a Telegram bot on their channels to automatically prevent any user associated with the Com from joining their chats.

If a 764 member tried to join, the bot would tag the individual’s handle and say “Known pedo joined group. Reported to group moderators. Reason: Participated in 764 associated group of child groomers.”

Eventually the bot started showing up in some of their own splinter groups and chats in an effort to not be “fedded” or caught by FBI agents.

Regular participants seemed keen on gaining notoriety — and although the initial CVLT 764 disbanded after several arrests, the movement did not die.

More Splinter Groups Mean More Arrests

A guy who went by the moniker Duck, whose real name is Angel Almeida, was picked up on federal gun charges in Brooklyn in November of 2021. As the investigation developed, additional charges for child exploitation were added.

The DOJ press release states, “between July 2021 and December 2021, Almeida enticed a minor, Jane Doe-1, to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing videos.  Between February 2020 and November 2021, Almeida also enticed another minor, Jane Doe-2, to engage in sexual contact, a violation of the Mann Act.” 

Inside the Com world, Duck had gained a reputation for posting graphic videos of animal abuse. And like Limkin, Almeida wanted to join the Nazi satanic cult, Order of the Nine Angles, or o9a, actively seeking out a sponsor in group chats.

When Almeida was arrested, Federal agents found an o9a blood covenant in his room that read “a covenant signed in blood, may the devil walk with you always” with symbols denoting his commitment. It’s unclear, however, if he ever actually joined.

During one of the court proceedings, the judge asked Almeida if he had ever been treated for mental illness, to which he responded, “I was diagnosed with schizophrenic bipolar disorder, but I never took medication for it.” The judge then asks the defendant if he understands the charges, to which Almeida responds “No,” followed by, “I’ve been in lockup since I was 14. You tell me how the fuck that make sense. Ain’t that child abuse? Come on now. Y’all can is suck my fucking dick. Y’all full of shit. I don’t listen to none of these morals, none of these bullshit-ass ethics, man. I’m a fucking beast, n***a. What the fuck you talking about, n***a? I’m a god, n***a. I do whatever the fuck I want, n***a. Fuck you. Fuck America, n***a. Fuck the law, n***a. Straight up.” At the end of the proceeding the judge ordered a competency exam.

After his arrest, Com members commented on how he was always chasing fame.

Another splinter group, Legion 8797, was started by a guy who went by the moniker MK Ultra. His real name is Kierre Anthony Cutler and he too has been federally charged with distributing child pornography. When he was arrested the police found a folder on his cell phone labeled “Telegram.” In it they found CSAM, photos of graphic self-mutilation, animal torture, and videos of unknown persons committing suicide — some of whom were juveniles.

According to court documents, “upon completion of reviewing Cutler’s cell phone, Det. Basco located over 700 images of the worst child exploitation he has observed in his career. Nearly every image of child sexual exploitation showed the child to be bound or restrained and in many cases an element of sadism was observed.”

Another splinter group, Cultist, originally named Cultivist, was started by the aforementioned Kalana Limkin, who went by the user name Vore. In addition to sharing graphic child porn images of girls as young as 5, he led his followers on swatting missions. (Swatting is the practice of making multiple phone calls to 911 in an attempt to bring a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.) Limkin was also a regular poster of Nazi memes on 4chan.

A private website, accessible through a link in a Telegram chat, describes in detail the rise and fall of the group. In reference to Vore, aka Limkin, it states, “With the rise and popularity of CP soaring, ‘I mean, if it’s there I might as well watch it, right?’”

On March 17, 2023, Limkin posted the following on Telegram: “As you know Ada ‘doxed’ me and all that shit happened blah blah blah. Just a fair notice if you were hoping the cops would come bursting through my door or I’d leave or I’d run away, some shit like that, I’m sorry to burst your bubble but that will never happen. The cops will not come bursting through my door because they do not know where my door is located. See because cops never did come to my house, no feds talked to me and none of my electronics got seized as you should know by now. Ada and I have gone through such a fun time but everything is over. Cultists will continue being made for the end of time and will continue being the only anarchy server left.”

A warrant was issued for his arrest on December 14, 2023.

A different splinter group, 767, that was active in 2021, appears to have had an admin possibly as young as 14 who repeatedly offered to cut herself on voice chat for money–and there were takers.

Leak Society, which came later, repurposed much of the same content previously uploaded to CVLT 764, Anarchy and Cultist. They onboarded many of the same participants and the group is still active today. Their public Telegram currently has 5258 members who chat constantly, often reminiscing about drama that occurred over the past three years. Their bio states no CP–but some CP has still been shared.

One conversation between a newgen, or next generation cultist, and an old gen solidifies the general disdain that members have for their victims. The newgen states, “CP is like heroin. So many real ones going down for it.” To which the old gen responds, “CP isnt going to kill you. The laws will.”

Several participants have become notorious for their actions outside of the Com world. The aforementioned Riley Williams was one of the most high profile January 6 rioters in the U.S. Capitol, sentenced to three years in prison. Recently a newgen asked “whys riley in jail”, to which another account responded “The boy or the girl? … I think the girl isn’t anymore. She stole nancy pelosis laptop”.

In fact, several of the photos from the FBI Statement of Facts in her case are from a Cvlt-related Discord server where she boasted about stealing the laptop among other things. She also shared two separate videos of herself saying “Heil Hitler” as well as photos of her fansigning BERSERKR across her chest. Williams also spent time in other accelerationist Telegram channels including Hammer run by the notorious neo-Nazi Chris Polhaus. 

Another bizarre connection involves a video that recently went viral on X, formerly known as Twitter. In the video, a Tennessean man named Jeffrey Scott West fires a gun at a younger man, clipping his ear, before shooting himself. The younger man is Kyle W. Spitze, and he is West’s partner’s son. Spitze is a long time member of the Com groups and goes by the name Criminal. Although the video went viral in January of 2024, the incident actually occurred much earlier in August of 2023, and had been posted by Criminal on Telegram. 

On February 10, 2024 a search warrant was issued for Spitze’s iPhone. On it the FBI found explicit images of a 12 year old victim.

At one point in 2022 members of sextortion Coms apparently hired television host Chris Hansen of To Catch a Predator fame to do a Cameo in a video reposted by splinter group 221. (Cameo is an app where you can hire celebrities to record messages.) In his message he admonished one of their members for predatory behavior and congratulated those who “kicked out” the perpetrator. 

Adults in the Room

Eventually these groups started attracting adult predators. 

On February 8, 2024, the Department of Justice indicted a Michigan man named Richard Anthony Densmore on five counts related to child pornography. According to evidence presented at the February 5, 2024 detention hearing, “Densmore, under the username ‘Rabid,’” created “a chat room on Discord called Sewer.” The server was used to stream “minors engaging in self-harm and sexually explicit conduct.” He also posted beastiality. Densmore, who is a 47 year old Veteran, streamed himself, prior to his arrest, sailing on a boat to “CP Island” where he housed his private stash. After Cadenhead was arrested, he posted another video of himself burning evidence—including his cell phone. 

In September of 2022, William JohnScott Tulko Jr. of Cape Coral, Florida, who went by the username iRapeKids666, was arrested for possessing and transmitting child pornography. He was 34 at the time and a prolific poster in several Com groups. His Discord bio partially read, “Unfathomably based father with a rape loving daughter.”

Tulko was also an avid gamer who ran a YouTube channel under the name HumanHate666 where he liked to stream World War Z gameplay. Several of his video thumbnails are photos of underage girls taken from ‘hurtcore’ child abuse videos.

Another enterprising predator created a 32-chapter guide on how to make money being an effective sextorter. The guide offers one on one services and access to buyers for a 20% vig. “If you have a platform where you are selling your sextortion content, you will be able to recruit perpetrators by offering them money. Perpetrators, especially psychopaths, who have only their own interests in mind, will be more inclined to stick with you over the long term if they can make money working for you. This financial incentive not only attracts perpetrators but also ensures their loyalty and commitment to sextortion.”

Foray Into Terrorgram

Other splinter groups embraced militant accelerationism, mimicking Terrorgram in its style and content. Nazi symbology mixed with videos of racially motivated mass shootings, and members showing off pictures of their own weapons.

One such group, AAST, operates mainly in Russia and posts about their “martyrdom” in the Ukraine and Donbass region.

The group glorifies Atomwaffen Division (AWD) and Sonnenkrieg Division, known for spawning hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism–most notably the 2018 murder of Jewish college student Blaze Bernstein. In 2015 Atomwaffen Division republished James Mason’s book Siege which advocates for the total destruction of American Democracy in order to replace it with a Nazi-like white ethnostate. Mason was arrested for child pornography in 1991 and according to the American Futurist website, the National Socialist Order, created out of the ashes of Atomwaffen Division, was disbanded in 2022 because “bad actors” took “over the organization and are now using it to promote The Order of the Nine Angles’ Satanism and Child Rape.”

Propaganda videos from the Maniacs.Murder.Cult — a Ukrainian Nazi organization that was taken down in 2021 for planning terrorist attacks in Russia — were also posted. 

Another accelerationist splinter group is No Lives Matter (NLM for short – not to be confused with Native Lives Matter). The group bio reads: “NO LIVES MATTER/764 – IDIOLIZES DEATH EXALTING IT WITH GODLIKE ESSENCE THAT CARRIES OUT THE PURIFICATION OF ALL MANKIND THROUGH THE NIGHTMARE OF ENDLESS ATTACKS”

In the chat are ISIS videos and the Satanist book Temple ov Blood. [Temple ov Blood is also the name of an o9a offshoot group.] Also in the chat is the particularly disturbing Haters Handbook written by Commander Butcher of Maniacs.Murder.Cult, which idolizes Timothy McVeigh, Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant, school shootings, and hate crimes: “People like us who want to live should start exterminating other human beings.” One chapter discusses turning the current movement into a Fourth Reich. 

There is also a two page manifesto titled “1488! Annihilate All Women” that argues “women need to be raped” since “they are notorious liars and don’t know their own minds.”

Lorebooks

A troubling aspect of the Com culture is the creation of what the extorters call Lorebooks. Lorebooks are pages where the victim is doxxed, often including the names and addresses of family members, along with the lurid aspects of their extortion. 

Many of these books contain degrading language, photos and videos of self-harm and nudity. Almost all of the victims are underage. “I used u for content but you made it shitty u worthless n*****,” says one extorter.

A young victim describes her painful ordeal on a subreddit for victims of groomers,

“I was blackmailed into joining a call with him and another girl, and forced into disgusting degrading acts. They forced me to cut myself, and tried to continue by making me drink bong water, cutting out my hair, and even tried to blackmail me into abusing my own dogs. The next day i checked my socials to see that he had made a throwaway account, with a link to a folder full of all my images, my college, my home address, and more. He told me he was going to share the folder around the internet, and tried to tell me i was in the wrong, and that it was my fault that this was happening.”

The victim blaming that runs rampant throughout the chats is also common in the Lorebooks. Under the picture of one victim the text reads, “Look out for (redacted) known attention seeking whore who was molested by her father.” And under the picture of another, “One of the biggest whore, used and groomed by many. Created several fan signs and wrote names with blood on her naked underage body…even ni**** Mk Ultra made her do some fan signs for pedophile group Legion and she happily did it all. Shes into pedophiles like any other com whore…” One extorter repeatedly refers to his underage victims as “child porn actresses.”

Unicorn Riot asked Cardeli how much of this is being driven by the internet. The current generation of youth has a “different understanding of public and private.” Being raised with social media has “normalized the idea that nothing is private anyway,” so there is “little pausing and reflecting.” This is compounded by the fact that kids are often not “taught skills for digital safety at school or at home.”

A Child Porn Bot

Some of the child porn images posted in these rooms are watermarked with the name of a bot on Telegram that drives traffic to a hidden website that sells child pornography. When you click start on the bot, a link pops up with a passcode. If you hit the link and type in the passcode, you will be taken to a hidden website that sells access to CSAM in private Telegram chat rooms.

The site owners believe that their private rooms can operate unencumbered: “100% guarantee that the channels will not be blocked and you will have access to the material 24/7 (thanks to paid access and relatively low price). For a channel to be blocked you need to have at least 30-50 reports from people who are against such content. Therefore, the person who, for some moral reason, will seek to block our channels, will need to pay for a minimum of 30 invitation links. And what is the point of this, if in 30 minutes, will be activated reserve?” ) In other words, if the private rooms get shut down by Telegram for having child porn in them–they will have new rooms up and running within half an hour with the same content.)

What’s Next: Coms vs. Nat Socs

Some of the Com members have now tried to start legitimate national socialist groups or have joined existing ones to varied degrees. Some have taken to spamming national socialist chats with both gore and CSAM. 

In one Telegram channel, for instance, they openly argue that it’s ok to extort and abuse young girls if they are not white. “Everyone knows we ruin the lives of shit skins and degenerates and make them mutilate themselves badly.” As group members watch a video of an underage dark-skinned girl cutting herself, they chime in with “I’ll make sure this bitch dies from blood loss,” “lmao,” and “Make her take anticoagulant.”

All of this is very inconvenient for many traditional National Socialists given how fond they are of claiming pedophilia is a left-wing problem, or related to what they view as homosexual degeneracy. And although there is a well documented history of some neo-Nazis being charged with sex crimes, such as James Mason, the Com movement may be a bridge too far for many of them.

As such, several national socialist groups are now going on the offensive and exposing the groomers that have joined their ranks. One recently created expose channel has a post that reads, “While those individuals may have appropriated NS symbols they don’t really look like white supremacists.” Another claims that the pedophiles are Jewish: he “likes to claim to be white, while quite clearly adhering to the (((Karl Marx))) phenotype.”

But not everyone is on board with this. “It’d be really stupid if we’re going to go against E** over pedos,” says one guy. And an individual, who is in both a Com chat and a Nat Soc chat states: “Raping minors is accelerationism.” Accelerationists believe that leaning into disruptive or degenerate forces can be a useful tool for destabilizing society and bringing about a race war. In other words, they believe if child porn posted by edgy teenagers causes chaos and reactionary responses, so be it. 

A Warning

On September 12, 2023, the FBI posted a public service announcement in regards to these Com groups and their extortion activities.

“The violent online groups use many names, including 676, 764, CVLT, Court, Kaskar, Harm Nation, Leak Society, and H3ll, but continuously evolve and form subgroups under different monikers. To gain access to a majority of these groups, prospective members are required to live-stream or upload videos depicting their minor victims harming animals or committing self-harm, suicide, murder, or other acts of violence.”

FBI Public Service Announcement

One Com girl shared a screenshot of a text from her mom shortly after the warning was published, “please be careful on Roblox and Discord as I know you use those apps and I saw an article about these online groups who target people your age.” The response from the group was general disdain and laughter.

On January 17, 2024, the FBI sent out another warning. “These crimes can lead victims to self-harm and has led to suicide. From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations received over 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors. The sextortion involved at least 12,600 victims—primarily boys—and led to at least 20 suicides.”

According to Cardeli, “We are in the midst of a youth mental health crisis. There are not enough mental health providers to meet the demand.” That should give us all pause.

If you are a victim and need help in the United States:

• RAINN’s Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or online chat service
• Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline: childhelphotline.org

Canadian services listed by the CBC:

• Cybertip.ca 
• Canada’s Suicide Crisis Helpline: Call or text 988.
• Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868. Text 686868. Live chat counselling on the website.
• Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention: Find a 24-hour crisis centre.
• This guide from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health outlines how to talk about suicide with someone you’re worried about.

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