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TUCSON, AZ (AZFamily) — A Southern Arizona man is facing federal charges after authorities say he produced child pornography and was cyberstalking underage girls through an online network of extremists known as “764″ and “CVLT.”
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 20-year-old Baron Martin of Tucson was arrested this week for multiple offenses.
Federal officials say the terror and sextortion networks “764″ and “CVLT” systematically spread child porn while targeting kids to desensitize and normalize child porn and violent gore material to “corrupt and groom their victims toward future violence.”
The feds say Martin made two teens, ages 13 and 16, “self-mutilate” for him and cyberstalked a different child, threatening to kill her grandmother.
“764 remains a dangerous network of violent extremists who systematically target children and weaponize child sexual abuse material for the purpose of furthering an accelerationist agenda, destroying civilized society, and causing the collapse of the U.S. Government,” said Matthew G. Olsen, assistant attorney general for the National Security Division. “The Department of Justice is fully committed to stopping 764’s acts of terrorism and disrupting the 764 network.”
Reporting from the Washington Post and the Global Network on Extremism and Technology details the group was started by a Texas teenager who had a fascination with “online content depicting murder and torture.” Recruitment for engagement is typically through online gaming or Discord, a messaging platform that targets gamers.
Last month, a man associated with the 764 network was sentenced to 30 years for sexually exploiting a child.
In recent months, Arizona’s Family has reported on numerous sextortion cases in the Valley and across the country.
“These predators are extremely smart. They know how to identify insecurities and things that are missing and be able to fill those pieces,” said Tempe mom Amanda Schneider.
Schneider said the recent arrest of Martin and the details behind his alleged crimes elicited a familiar response she had when her own 13-year-old son was sextorted.
“This case and these cases as a mom, I just can’t even, completely anger,” she said with tears in her eyes.
All of this happened on Discord, which is how Schneider found her son a victim in 2021 by a fellow gamer who claimed to be 16 years old.
“The way that this person was talking to our son was not how a 16-year-old would speak,” Schneider said. “He was starting a very slow process of grooming my son and I don’t know where it would have ended.”
It turned out that the gamer was actually a 35-year-old convicted pedophile from the UK and had been asking Schneider’s son about sex acts and to describe them, but she believes they stopped it before it went further.
It’s left trauma ever since.
“To this day day my son has yet to talk to us about it,” Schneider said. “I think there has just been a lot of shame and not wanting to deal with it.”
Schneider urges other parents to check in with their kids and trust if something seems wrong.
“I felt intuitively there was something wrong and I listened to it, and I’m so grateful that I did,” she said.
What signs should I watch out for?
The FBI asks parents and guardians to monitor their children’s online activities closely. Agents say these criminals may even send razor blades, sexual devices or other harmful material to their victims.
You can also take these key steps.
- Look for fresh cuts, bruises, wounds, and scars in unusual patterns;
- Look for sudden behavior and appearance changes;
- Be attentive to children wearing long sleeves or pants in unusual circumstances;
- Monitor children’s online activity and discuss the risks of sharing information and content; and
- Run frequent online searches of family and children’s information to help identify and prevent the spread of personal information on the internet.
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