Research Brief · Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE)
Victims Without Borders: Transnational Victimization in Sadistic Exploitation Networks
Review of 86 case records in PERIL's 764 Relational Network.
27
Cases with victims in
another country
16
Countries where
victims were located
10
Cases of victims
in the U.S.
10
Cases of perpetrators
from the U.S.
5
Confirmed cases with
victims abroad but unknown countries

Sadistic exploitation networks, like 764, are not organized around geography. They recruit on globally distributed gaming and social media platforms, like Discord, Roblox, Snapchat, and Telegram, where a victim's location is not a barrier to coercion. Sextortion, coerced self-harm, and coerced animal cruelty can be directed through these platforms by text and video, allowing a perpetrator in one country to control a victim in another. The harm that results is genuinely transnational: it crosses borders easily and implicates authorities in multiple jurisdictions, complicating the process of finding perpetrators and holding them accountable for their crimes. Across the records in the NVE Tracker that are linked to 764, 27 perpetrators have known victims in countries other than the ones they were living in. Given the sparsity of information about victims in publicly available sources, the true count is likely much higher. Of the cases that have been documented, the United States is both the largest source of perpetrators and victims in the network.

STEP 1
Borderless Contact
Recruitment on global gaming and social media platforms
A victim's location is irrelevant to the offender
➞
STEP 2
Coercion at a Distance
Directed by text, chat, and live video
No travel or physical proximity required
➞
STEP 3
Harm in Another Jurisdiction
Sextortion, self-harm, and deaths abroad
27 documented cases
Where Perpetrators Lived and Where Their Victims Were
WHERE THE PERPETRATOR LIVEDWHERE THE VICTIMS WERE11 countries · 27 cases16 countriesUnited States10 casesUnited Kingdom5 casesRomania3 casesGermany2 cases1  France1  Georgia1  Greece1  Netherlands1  Norway1  Portugal1  SwedenUnited States10 casesAustralia5 casesUnited Kingdom5 casesCanada3 casesGermany3 casesRussia  2Brazil  1Finland  1France  1Greece  1India  1Italy  1Montenegro  1Netherlands  1South Korea  1Turkey  1Victims in the United StatesU.S. perpetrator, victims abroadNeither side is the United StatesBand width is proportional to the number of cases. A case with victims in two countries contributes a band to each.

Each band links a perpetrator's country of residence to a country where at least one of their identified victims was located. Perpetrator countries with one case each: France, Georgia, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden. Victim countries with one case each: Brazil, Finland, France, Greece, India, Italy, Montenegro, Netherlands, South Korea, Turkey. A further 5 cases confirm a victim abroad but the countries are unknown, and are excluded from the diagram.

The United States Is Both the Largest Source of Perpetration and Victimization
Most common corridors
United States → United Kingdom4
United Kingdom → United States4
United States → Australia2
28 additional country pairs1

31 distinct perpetrator-country-to-victim-country links are documented. The U.S.–U.K. link is the most common in the data and runs in both directions at equal volume.

Traffic runs both ways

Ten perpetrators living in the United States are documented harming victims abroad, and ten perpetrators living elsewhere are documented harming victims in the United States.

Many cases of cross-border victimization have no links to the United States. Portugal to Brazil, Romania to the Netherlands, Sweden to Australia, Norway to Australia, Germany to Finland, Greece to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands to Canada and to Montenegro — More than half of the documented cases connect two countries outside of the United States.

Multi-jurisdiction investigations.
Every one of these 27 cases required close collaboration between at least two countries to identify the perpetrators and victims. These partnerships not only included law enforcement agencies in each country, but also non-profit organizations that received tips from the public about online abuse and shared them with partner organizations abroad.
The Reach of a Single Perpetrator
Where the victims were almost entirely foreign

Spijkenisse, Netherlands. A 22-year-old operating as “Turpien” ran a four-year Snapchat and Telegram sextortion operation, coercing at least sixty girls aged 13–20 into producing degrading material and selling it in paid Telegram groups. Of the 57 identified victims, exactly one lived in the Netherlands. Most were in the United States, with others in Canada, Germany, and Montenegro. He was sentenced in June 2026 to seven years plus compulsory psychiatric treatment.

Leeds, United Kingdom. Justin Swaddle, who began offending at 17, coerced girls aged 13–17 into sexual activity and self-harm and directed them to carve his usernames into their skin. The National Crime Agency identified 117 victims worldwide, of whom only eight were in the United Kingdom. He was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court in August 2026.

Sources: 764 Relational Network node profiles; NVE Tracker records #1675 and #1716.

Where one network spans continents

Portsmouth, United Kingdom. Bradley Talbot moderated a 6,000-member Com group that blackmailed girls aged 12–17 into producing child sexual abuse material. More than 100 child victims have been identified across eight countries: the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany, India, Russia, South Korea, and Australia. The group's leader was arrested in Victoria, Australia.

Bucharest, Romania. A 17-year-old member of the 764 subgroup XVN directed a victim in Westchester County, New York to send nude images and tattoo his pseudonym onto her skin, and threatened a second victim in Oklahoma to send the images to her classmates. When victims refused his demands, he sent false bomb threats to U.S. institutions naming the victim as the sender of the threats so police would be dispatched to their homes. He admitted to more than 450 bomb or mass-shooting threats against targets in the U.S. and U.K.

Sources: NVE Tracker records #1653 and #1532; Bucharest Court of Appeal ruling, May 2025.

Victims at Scale.
Technology not only facilitates cross-border harms, it does so at a massive scale. A single perpetrator in these networks can easily harm hundreds of victims around the world without ever leaving their residence.
Coercion at a Distance Can Be Fatal
Case examples · Remote harm with lethal or near-lethal outcomes

Hamburg, Germany → Finland and Washington State. “White Tiger”, who led a 764 Discord server from Hamburg, coerced a 12-year-old Finnish girl into carving his alias into her body. In January 2022, he took over her chat with a 13-year-old boy in Gig Harbor, Washington, and coerced the teen to commit suicide.

Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal → São Paulo, Brazil. A Portugal-based 17-year-old is accused of being the main instigator of an October 2023 attack on Sapopemba State School in São Paulo, Brazil, which killed a 17-year-old girl and injured three others. He was in contact with the Brazilian minor who carried out the shooting and encouraged him to commit the attack. The Lisbon Public Prosecutor's Office charged him with seven counts of aggravated homicide — one completed, six attempted — for directing minors abroad.

Umeå, Sweden → Australia and Germany. A Swedish defendant is charged on roughly 70 counts, with several concerning a girl in Australia whom he coerced into sexual acts, self-harm, and killing her family's cats on camera. He allegedly telephoned Australian police from Sweden with a false armed-offender report against her father to force her compliance with his demands. He also faces two counts of attempted murder for allegedly coercing a victim in Germany to attempt suicide.

Roșia de Secaș, Romania → the Netherlands. A 14-year-old Romanian boy was extradited on a European Arrest Warrant and convicted by the District Court for Amsterdam in July 2026 of extortion, coerced self-harm, and rape against a 13-year-old Dutch girl he met on Roblox.

Trier, Germany → Moscow Oblast, Russia. In December 2025, a 15-year-old fatally stabbed a 10-year-old classmate and wounded a school security guard in Gorki-2, Odintsovo district, livestreaming part of the attack. In August 2026, German authorities disclosed that a 19-year-old from the Trier area who was arrested in March 2026 is under investigation for allegedly using chats to encourage the minor in Russia to commit the attack. The teen from Germany reportedly circulated video of the Russia attack online. The German teen is separately alleged to have incited teens in the United States and Sweden to commit arson attacks.

Sources: Taylor v. Discord, Inc., 3:26-cv-05245-BHS (W.D. Wash.); Lisbon Public Prosecutor's Office charging decision; Åklagaren v. Johansson, B 1215-25 (Umeå tingsrätt); District Court for Amsterdam, 10 July 2026. NVE Tracker records #1525, #1518, #1502, #1503, #1704. NVE Tracker records #1722 and #1644; SWR/tagesschau.de and Rhein-Zeitung/dpa, 20 Aug. 2026.

Methodology. This brief reviews 86 cases in PERIL's 764 Relational Network, covering 55 named perpetrators, together with the person, alias, incident, and group records in the network itself. Sources include court records, national police statements, and news reporting for perpetrators not charged in the United States. Counting rule: a case is counted as cross-border only where the source establishes both the perpetrator's country of residence at the time of the offense conduct and a country where at least one identified victim was located. Cases are counted per perpetrator, so co-defendants charged in one filing are counted separately. Where a case has victims in several countries, each contributes to a band in the diagram, so bands exceed cases. Caveats: counts reflect what is publicly documented and represent a baseline, not a ceiling; 24 cases state no victim location whatsoever. Four cases are counted on qualified attribution, where the perpetrator’s country is established from reporting rather than a charging document, or where the harm abroad is attributed to a network the perpetrator led rather than to a charged act of their own. This material concerns child sexual exploitation, self-harm, and suicide; if you or someone you know is in crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) is available in the United States.
Data compiled from PERIL's NVE Tracker & 764 Relational Network
Author: Michael Jensen