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.”
