A 17-year-old Mainer has become the first juvenile in the country charged and adjudicated by the federal government for crimes related to their role in online nihilistic extremist groups.
The teen, who has not been publicly identified, allegedly committed multiple acts of juvenile delinquency, including conspiring to sexually exploit a child, sexually exploiting and enticing a child, distributing child sexual abuse material, sending interstate threats, cyberstalking victims, and identity theft, the FBI announced Tuesday.
The FBI said the charges are “related to the teen’s role in online nihilistic extremist groups connected to the 764 network,” a decentralized online group largely made up of minors that the bureau says uses “threats, blackmail, and manipulation to coerce or extort victims into producing, sharing, or live-streaming acts of self-harm, animal cruelty, sexually explicit acts, and/or suicide.”
The 17-year-old will serve an unspecified “term of official detention,” followed by juvenile delinquent supervision, the FBI said.
“What this juvenile did would shock most people to their very core, and it is our hope that by publicizing this case, others will be deterred from making the same devastating choices this teen did,” Ted E. Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Division, said in a statement.
Several federal officials quoted in a news release Tuesday suggested that the case was brought to the federal level to make a statement.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said the “shocking and disturbing nature of the criminal conduct” in the case “required a forceful response to protect the public from predatory nihilistic violent extremism.”
The classification of “nihilistic violent extremism” was coined by U.S. federal prosecutors in 2025. The FBI defines its practitioners as “individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad, in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.”
