A 17-year-old from Lethbridge has been charged with offences related to terrorism, child sexual abuse and exploitation material (CSAEM), and animal cruelty in a case involving the online 764 network, according to the RCMP. The youth was arrested in the southern Alberta city on Sept. 3. Their gender has not been disclosed, and they cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The investigation began after the Lethbridge Police Service passed a tip to the RCMP. The RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) examined a user on Discord who police allege was affiliated with an online group involved in ideologically motivated violent extremism. Investigators concluded that the user’s online activity was consistent with the 764 network, police said.

The youth is scheduled to appear at the Lethbridge Alberta Court of Justice on Oct. 14. Police have not said when the Lethbridge investigation began or described the conduct that led to the charges. The RCMP said it could not release further details because the investigation is ongoing and before the courts.

The case is the second involving an Alberta teenager accused of offences connected to 764. Mounties allege that a 15-year-old from the Edmonton area, arrested last year, was planning to commit offences related to the network.

The network was listed as a terrorist entity in Canada in December 2025. It is described as a transnational online ecosystem of violent predators who share an ideology, rather than an organized crime group with central leadership. Police say members recruit children and young people through social media, messaging services and online games, then groom them to commit serious acts.

Temitope Oriola, a University of Alberta professor of criminology and sociology, described the network as “a network of transnational actors operating in multiple jurisdictions whose explicit goal is nihilism or valuelessness or normlessness.” He added: “They have a devotion to a pathological hatred of humanity.”

According to police, recruitment can take place on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, as well as messaging apps including Discord, Twitch and Telegram. Popular gaming platforms such as Roblox, Steam and Minecraft are also among the channels used to approach young people. Elements of the network hold extreme ideological views, police say, and spread propaganda while desensitizing and radicalizing children to violence and encouraging acts both online and offline.

“The explicit goal of 764 and similar networks is simply violence for the sake of violence, based on the hatred of humanity and hatred of society,” Oriola said. “For these individuals, violence becomes not a means to an end necessarily - but an end in and of itself.”

Predators associated with 764 routinely target youth, particularly those they see as vulnerable, and urge them to engage in sexual acts, self-harm and animal torture. Oriola said some are encouraged to film self-harm or the killing of pets and other animals. “They encourage members to self-harm and record their self-harms. They encourage killing the family cat, for example, or nearby cats and dogs and to film those. And, of course, they’re also involving varying degrees of sextortion - essentially blackmailing young people with asking for nudes and so forth,” he said.

RCMP said victims have also been pressured to write messages in blood or carve names and online handles into their own skin, or the skin of another young person, pet or animal. The abuse can involve sextortion, in which young people are blackmailed after being asked for explicit images.

Police describe recruitment as a cycle. Recruiters are often youth or young adults who may themselves have been victimized and exploited by an existing member before being extorted or pressured to find someone else to target. “This has been driven by relatively young individuals,” Oriola said. The RCMP said children may be more likely to trust a recruiter who is also young.

Youth have been recruited for harmful purposes for decades, but the RCMP said trends associated with the 764 network began appearing in earnest about three years ago. Supt. Matt Johnson, officer in charge of the RCMP federal policing northwest region’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, said police have seen a sharp rise in investigations tied to 764 and nihilistic violent extremism, a term originally coined by the FBI.

“We have seen a massive spike in these types of investigations, specifically related to the 764 space or nihilistic violent extremism - which was actually a term originally coined by the FBI,” Johnson said. ABC News reported last year that the FBI had been conducting hundreds of investigations tied to 764.

Johnson said Canadian police began noticing ideological elements in cases that might previously have been approached as mental health concerns or child-luring investigations. “Traditional child exploitation files, where somebody was being groomed or abused, but we started picking up these ideological undercurrents -particularly, heinous acts of violence that were being associated with them.”

The age range for youth victims can be as young as 10 to 14. Johnson and Oriola said recruiters look for vulnerabilities they can manipulate. Grooming often starts in public chat spaces before shifting into private messages, police said.

Johnson described how recruiters can first create a sense of connection and then isolate a young person. “People who are additionally isolated, especially as children, and are particularly susceptible to individuals who target them with feelings of like what you’d call ‘love bombing’ - providing a sense of belonging - and then extracting them from that larger online group into private digital messaging, when that traditional extortion-type behaviours begin,” he said.

The RCMP said the network’s international reach makes it an issue for law enforcement across borders. “We are working daily with local municipal, provincial, other federal partners, and our international partners in order to track, divert, and charge when we can suspects that are identified, as well as identifying victims,” Johnson said.

The RCMP urges parents and caregivers to pay attention to children’s online activity and report suspicious behaviour. Police say warning signs may include teenagers using apps such as Discord or Telegram, or other encrypted platforms that limit parental visibility, while hiding that activity from adults in their lives.

Other signs identified by the RCMP include falling school grades, spending more time online, unusual moodiness or agitation, and increased isolation or withdrawal. Pets that go missing or become unusually fearful or avoidant may also be a concern. Police said a recruited teenager may develop a new interest in questioning or rejecting moral constraints, gore, depictions of violence, terrorist propaganda or occult imagery.

In a notice about violent groups exploiting children, the RCMP also advises adults to look for youth who cover their skin in unusual ways, use more bandages than usual, or have cuts or carvings on their skin. The agency said recruiters may teach young children not to speak with adults or how to conceal their activities.

“Having good digital literacy as an adult caregiver, knowing what your children are doing online, monitoring who they are engaged with, what they are doing, being actively involved, that is a huge part of risk mitigation for this environment,” Johnson said. “Because the victims we’re seeing essentially have very limited supervision - very limited awareness of the people around them, what they’re doing online and who they’re engaging with.”

The RCMP said parents and caregivers should remain involved in children’s online lives and report concerns. Anyone who believes someone is in immediate danger should call 911.

Based on reporting by Global News Edmonton.