Helsingin Sanomat: You do as I say

ARTICLE

This article was originally published in English in Helsingin Sanomat Monthly Magazine on 12.12.2025 and has been translated into English below.

You do as I say

In the fall of 2020, Bradley Cadenhead stopped going to school. 

He had just turned fifteen in August, and his first year of high school had barely begun. He retreated to his room in his mother's cramped three-bedroom apartment in the small town of Stephenville, Texas, and started spending all his time online. 

There, he went by “Felix”. Sometimes “Brad” or “Felix AKA Brad” or “Brad 764.” He picked up the number sequence 764 from the family's zip code, TX 76401. 

Around the townhouse stretched a vast Southern landscape. Gas stations, car dealerships, and quiet side streets. Dairy farms, cattle, and rodeos. 

Small-town charm, as they say on the Stephenville city website. 

Bradley Cadenhead was the only child his parents had together. A mama's boy, as Bradley's mother would later describe to authorities. Such a sweet boy. 

His half-sisters were ten years older. On Sundays, Bradley attended the local Baptist church with his family, where they believe in love, compassion, and the power of prayer. The church was small and private, as churches in these parts of the country tend to be. Bradley's father was in charge of the congregation's website and the music during services. 

When Bradley was eleven, his mother moved out. His grandmother stepped in to help with the housekeeping. 

In fifth grade, Bradley started being bullied at school. More problems arose in junior high. Bradley began cutting himself and smoking cannabis. He earned money for marijuana by mowing lawns. 

In eighth grade, the school contacted the police. Bradley was reported to have threatened to bring a gun to school. 

His teacher said the boy watched violent videos in the computer class. She feared that once Bradley gathered enough courage, he would carry out his threats. 

The teacher wanted Bradley out of her class. 

Bradley faced criminal charges and was convicted of making a terrorist threat, receiving probation. He spent six months in a secure juvenile facility, received help for his mental health issues, and repeated eighth grade. 

All this is revealed in documents that the U.S. Department of Justice began to produce about Bradley Cadenhead. Hair color: red. Eye color: blue. Height: 5'11”. Weight: 194 pounds. 

The teenager's signature on the documents is childlike and shaky. 

According to the records, Bradley Cadenhead started viewing pornography online before he was ten. He was particularly fascinated by videos of torture. As a teenager, he became obsessed with violent and shocking videos, the kind often referred to as “gore” on the internet. 

His mother told authorities she believed Bradley felt he was odd and an outsider. 

Online, Bradley Cadenhead was reborn as “Felix”. 

He created the first 764 discussion group on Discord as soon as he dropped out of school. He likely ended up on Discord because he played a lot of Minecraft. 

Discord is a social media platform popular among children and young people who enjoy video games. Its virtual world is designed to attract children, with soft colors, animations, cute emojis, stickers, and avatars. 

Anyone can create an open or closed discussion community on Discord. These are called “servers”. 

“Felix” visited various groups on Discord and the gaming site Roblox. He posted violent and shocking content and invited others to his “server”. 

Many came out of curiosity; some young people are drawn to all things dark. But “Felix's” community also attracted individuals interested in child sexual abuse, sadism, zoophilia, violent occultism, Satanism, and misogyny. There were adults among them too. 

“Felix” shared gore and visual material of child sexual abuse. 

Group 764 began to gain attention. 

In early July 2021, “Felix” wrote: 

I get those bitches to eat their pets and cut themselves — — I have evidence. 

This message is from material later obtained by the American newspaper The Washington Post and the German magazine Der Spiegel. The material contains thousands of messages sent from Bradley Cadenhead's Discord accounts in 2021. 

It is unclear how and where “Felix” acquired the illegal images and videos. Were some of them from the Tor network? 

Some of it he produced himself. 

He boasted about being good at manipulating girls. He was so good that underage victims agreed to send him nude photos. 

He began using these for blackmail. He threatened to send them to the children's parents or school. One of his youngest victims was ten years old. 

“Felix” called his victims “e-whores”. He bragged about founding a “legendary group”. 

Occasionally, “Felix's” Discord accounts were shut down. 

Someone had reported them. 

He would open a new account under a different name, and then another. 

The accounts accumulated into hundreds. 

In the spring of 2021, over a dozen members of the 764 group watched a livestream. 

The video is perhaps the most notorious shared in 764. In it, “Felix” orders a girl to kill her pet hamster with a razor blade. Then he commands the girl to bite off the hamster's head. 

A short excerpt from the recording was shown in an American TV documentary where “Felix” threatens the child: 

“If you don't bite a piece off, I'll make you do much nastier shit, okay. Hurry up.” 

“Stop that crying”, another teenage boy says. 

In the summer of 2021, “Felix” seemed to be on Discord constantly, at all hours of the day. 

Felix the cp god, one Discord user wrote.

“Cp” refers to the often-used, misleading colloquial term “child porn”. Authorities use the abbreviation CSAM, which stands for child sexual abuse material. 

Bradley Cadenhead managed to maintain the 764 community for a year before being caught. 

It was the summer of 2021 when the police in Texas became interested in reports made by Discord. “Felix's” images contained naked prepubescent girls and close-ups of their genitals. Some pictures documented child rapes committed by adult men. 

The police traced Cadenhead through his computer's IP address. He was living in Stephenville with his mother and her boyfriend. His father no longer wanted him at his place. 

At the end of August 2021, Cadenhead was arrested. He had just turned sixteen. Local police later told the media that Cadenhead apparently had not left his home in a year. 

During the house search, an HP computer and a Motorola phone were seized from his bed. Police technical investigators examined the devices for months. 

About twenty photographs and some videos of children being sexually abused were found on the computer. 

Some photographs showed cuts and outright carvings that children and young people had made on their skin. Many featured the numbers 764. 

Brad is a pedo, one read. 

The police listened to the seized audio recordings. In them, teenage boys and young men discussed grooming. 

The goal of grooming was to find underage girls on discussion forums. Preferably those who had difficulties in their lives. Suitable victims were sought from groups discussing eating disorders or self-harm. 

After obtaining nude photos, victims were blackmailed into performing increasingly humiliating and submissive acts. 

Bradley Cadenhead's legal documents include a statement from his probation officer. According to it, he had forced children to carve his initials or other references to the group into their skin. 

Cadenhead described the injuries he caused as “tributes”. 

The statement reads: 

His influence over some group members appeared extreme. Bradley said it was a self-made cult. Many group members idolized him as its leader. 

Cadenhead claimed that his “server” had hundreds of torture videos and between 200-400 followers. 

Last spring, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation released an unusual statement. 

The police warned of an international network called “The Com”, where children and young people are lured, manipulated, blackmailed, and forced to use extreme violence against themselves and others, it said. 

The police warned that these groups seek victims from social media and gaming platforms. The statement named one of the groups: 764. 

Europol and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had warned about 764 and other networks earlier in the spring. They had spoken of “online cult communities”. Such groups had formed during the COVID-19 pandemic when people stayed at home. 

Now the activity seemed to be spreading. 

The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation used more alarmist language than usual. The statement described the groups' activities as being “extremely cruel”. 

The police were concerned. Several Finnish children and young people had also ended up in these groups. 

Online, Bradley Cadenhead met “Trippy”. “Trippy” was involved in 764 from the beginning, or at least almost from the beginning. They were the same age, both born in 2005. 

“Trippy” took the leadership position of 764 when Cadenhead was arrested. He is also American, from High Point, North Carolina. “Trippy” lived there with his parents and younger sister. 

“War” joined at the end of 2023. He lived in Thessaloniki, Greece, but he is a U.S. citizen. 

“Trippy” had shared CSAM material even before Cadenhead founded 764. I have cp if you want to see... child porn, he had written on Snapchat in 2019 at age 14. 

“Trippy” and “War” named the core group 764 Inferno. 

It was a closed group that operated on platforms including the Russian-based instant messaging service Telegram. They switched between the platforms as needed. 

764 had a hierarchy. Everyone knew the inner circle's nicknames, those who were in charge. 

Only a few gained access to Inferno. “Trippy” and “War” decided on the members. First, one had to be able to produce content for the group. 

In May 2024, “Trippy” distributed instructions: 

Go to Reddit  Or Twitter  to a group discussing self-harm and talk to a girl as if she were a friend  then lure her by saying how much you like it when she cuts. 

Many of the girls thought they had found an online boyfriend. 

Later, some of them rose in 764's hierarchy to positions where they recruited new victims to the network. 

Everything happened under the protection of usernames. 

Inferno included at least “Trippy”, “War”, “Fail”, “Slain”, “Axx”, “Praise”, “Kills”, “Morgue”, “Acid”, “Gores”, “Whispers”, “Bank”, “Chai”, “Molly”, “Flaak”, “Ven”, “Arukk”, “Vincent Cane”, “Icon”, “Neo”, “Tears”, “Trap”, “Darkheart” and “Skvll”. These usernames are from a recent indictment that Helsingin Sanomat has obtained from the US authorities. 

There was a queue to join Inferno. At least “Browser”, “Auroa” and “Xalloxs” wanted to join. 

Later, the police found a video on “Xallox’s” phone showing an underage girl talking to someone in a live chat. The girl's upper body is naked, she pours bleach on her arm and sets it on fire. 

New members faced content production expectations. We won't take them in unless they produce something fucking crazy, “Trippy” messaged others. 

“Fucking crazy” meant violence against pets or younger siblings. It was also noted if someone beat up a passerby and videoed it for others. (In Sweden, trials against two teenage boys began in spring 2025. Both were accused of stabbing and filming it. According to media reports, they were active in 764 and the related NLM community. NLM is an acronym for No Lives Matter.) 

Would you kill an animal for me? one 764 member asked his victim. 

Another inquired: Should I do the beating tomorrow? It was July 2024. 

Yeah and on camera, “Trippy” replied. 

Only the best get in, so be careful, “War” reminded. 

He ordered a 12-year-old victim to masturbate on a video call. When the girl obeyed, he praised her. Good pup. 

In autumn 2024, “War” published a guide on the public 764 channel. It instructed how to gain victims' trust to get them to produce content for the group. Members were advised to focus on girls who were depressed or otherwise psychologically unstable. 

Victims were not chosen randomly. Thousands of private messages could accumulate in a few months. 

The guide read: To manipulate someone into producing material for us, they must feel loved. Then they won't want to lose you, and you can start giving them tasks, like producing blood marks. 

A blood mark meant that the victim had to draw or write on their skin with their own blood. 

In spring 2024, “War” conversed with a 13-year-old victim: 

Victim: do i have to write 764 on me 

“War”: you're not dumb 

Victim: what do you mean 

“War”: actually something else 

you could do something else 

Victim: tell me 

“War”: i don't wanna waste your time, plus you're shy 

Victim: baby tell me 

“War”: a little strip tease for the server 

Victim: how many people 

“War”: only 3 

Victim: who 

“War”: you wouldn't know them 

The girl obeys and does as “War” commands. “War” and other 764 Inferno members watch and comment. 

Later, the victim tells “War” she wants to kill herself. 

After “blood content” was produced, the victims were demanded to do “cut signs”.

The teenage boys of 764 competed over who made their victims perform the most humiliating, cruel, and submissive acts. With these, one gained influence in the group. 

To them the girls were “bitches”, “sluts” and “cut sluts”. Slaves, as one expert who has seen the group's messages says. 

After cutting, they were ordered to do carvings on themselves. 

In June 2024, “Axx” posted a link to the 764 Inferno group. It opened a folder containing pictures and videos. They featured one of the group's victims, a girl who was under 15. 

The folder contained material of the girl masturbating and cutting the group members' nicknames into her skin, among other things. 

What did you say at the end of the video, one member asked “Axx”. “Axx” replied: IT WAS LIKE PLEASE STOP and I said shut up whore and kicked her again. 

Similar folders have been made of other girls. They contain detailed information about their lives. Some 764 members obsessively document everything they can find out about their victims. 

These folders have a name within the community: lorebooks. 

Their content is described in the indictment filed against “Trippy” and “War” in the United States in spring 2025. Helsingin Sanomat has obtained the indictment material from the United States, along with several other official documents concerning 764. 

According to the indictment, the lorebooks contain, among other things, videos where victims under 15 are forced to masturbate or simulate masturbation with various objects. 

Many victims of 764 know that such a lorebook exists about them. They have been blackmailed with them. They were told, “I can close your lorebook to others if you do as I say”. 

Knowledge of these folders likely prevents victims from reporting the abuse. They fear that the images, videos, and screenshots of messages will be made public. Authorities speak of “extreme fear”. 

This is why many victims do not dare to be on social media under their real names. They live in fear: what if the network finds their profile. 

Those who have managed to leave are blackmailed back into the group. 

The 764 network cherishes these lorebooks. For them, images and videos of sexual violence are valuable currency. Pedophiles and hebephiles are known to exchange CSAM among themselves. 

If someone from 764 gets caught, others will take care of the material. The lorebooks are safe in “vaults”, or this is what they say. 

In an office in Sörnäinen, Helsinki, there is only one person in the evening’s darkness. Others have left work and gone home. 

Nina Vaaranen-Valkonen is a social psychologist and psychotherapist specializing in trauma treatment. She has worked in a youth psychiatric ward, Victim Support Finland, and Save the Children Finland. 

Then she founded Protect Children. 

“It’s my fifty-year-old's craze.” 

The organization protects children from sexual violence. It has projects that teach digital safety skills and advocate for victims' rights. It offers peer support groups for parents whose child has been a victim of sexual violence. The organization is Finnish, but it operates internationally and is mainly funded from abroad. 

Vaaranen-Valkonen also works as an expert on child sexual abuse at Interpol. 

She has seen conversations between 764 members and victims since the group's early days. She has supported victims and families in Finland and other countries. 

Vaaranen-Valkonen compares The Com groups to religious cults. You are unique, the victim is told first. Later, they try to isolate the victims from others. If they try to leave, they are pressured to come back. 

The abuse then follows the cycle of domestic violence: “First, attention is given, then comes violence. After that, they make amends and give special attention again, and the cycle goes on.” 

“But now we're not talking about adult women, but 8 to 12-year-old girls.” 

“They're made to do such shameful acts that it inevitably silences them.” 

Vaaranen-Valkonen has important advice for parents: no smartphones for children in bedrooms or bathrooms. 

“Some of the worst material come from those two places.” 

In 764 groups, the abnormal is normalized. The word “desensitize” appears frequently in American legal documents. If you see someone cutting themselves every day, you get used to it. 

Victims are forced to watch violent videos. A cat in a blender. A pet hamster being stepped on. Animals being tortured. 

They are shown sexual violence against other children, kids being raped. 

“Unfortunately, these children have seen more sexual violence material than the average child crime investigator.” 

One early morning in January 2022, an American named T. committed suicide. It happened in a grocery store parking lot in a small town in Washington state. 

T. was a 13-year-old transgender boy from an ordinary family. He had been suffering from mental health issues. 

Before his death, T. positioned his phone so that what happened next was recorded on video. 

Several people belonging to 764 watched the livestream in an Instagram group chat. 

They goaded T. on and encouraged him. 

Pat McMonigle worked for many years as an agent in the FBI. He participated in counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The opponents were al-Qaeda and ISIS. 

McMonigle lives in the same small town where T. committed suicide. He knows the grocery store in whose parking lot T. was found dead. He sometimes goes there grocery shopping with his family. 

McMonigle and his partner in the FBI's counter-terrorism task unit began investigating T.'s death. What had happened? Was someone responsible for it? Had a crime been committed? 

He recounts the stages of the police investigation over the phone. It is morning on the U.S. West Coast. He has just dropped his children off at the school bus and is sitting in his car. 

McMonigle no longer works for the FBI, which is why he can talk about the case. The work became too burdensome, especially after T.'s death, and he resigned. 

“Unfortunately, there have always been terrible people who want to harm children,” he says. 

“But now it's easier than ever because we've let predators into the playground.” 

He means the Internet and how freely children are allowed to operate there. 

The investigation progressed frustratingly slowly. 

What had happened before T.'s death? Who were the people in the Instagram chat encouraging T.? 

McMonigle says that the prosecutor initially did not want to take a case that was legally so complicated. 

He and his partner refused to give up. Identifying the chat participants became an obsession for them. 

Eventually, social media platforms like Discord and Instagram had to hand over messages related to T. to the FBI. 

Their timestamps pointed to Europe. The case began to unravel. 

A nickname “White Tiger” seemed to play a central role. He had directed and encouraged T. to commit suicide on Instagram. 

The FBI began monitoring him online. There, “White Tiger” described himself as an “e-girl groomer/blackmailer, pedophile”. He belonged to 764. 

One of “White Tiger's” victims appeared to live in the Nordic countries. The girl's English was so good that at first McMonigle thought she might be the child of an American diplomat. 

The girl had been 12 years old when “White Tiger” started messaging her. 

“White Tiger” began manipulating and blackmailing the child into self-destructive acts. He started demanding that the child kill herself on camera. 

The child resisted and did not want to, but “White Tiger” would not let go. He continued manipulating, did not give up, threatened her, obligated her, forced her. 

He made the child look for other victims and he dictated what she had to do. He instructed what words to use when the child approached others. 

On a Discord chat forum, the child found T. 

It took the FBI weeks to figure out who “White Tiger” was. He had covered his tracks well, using fake email addresses and numerous accounts on different platforms. 

However, one clue was found: a street address in Hamburg. 

The fact that “White Tiger” was not an adult surprised McMonigle. He found it almost unbelievable. 

“White Tiger” was an 18-year-old high school student of Iranian descent, living with his father and mother in an affluent area of Hamburg. 

It was February 2023 when Pat McMonigle traveled to Germany. The FBI handed over the results of their investigation to German authorities. McMonigle assumed “White Tiger” would be arrested immediately because “we told them everything we had.” 

However, it took another two years and four months before “White Tiger” was arrested. German police did conduct a house search and confiscated his computer in the fall of 2023, but he was not arrested until June 2025. 

“White Tiger” had begun studying medicine. 

McMonigle has wondered what happened during those two years and four months. “I hoped the German police had nabbed him, but I feared he was free and continued predating.” 

In German media, “White Tiger” is referred to as Shahriar J. McMonigle believes Shahriar J. managed to find new victims. 

He says he struggles most with the idea that children can do such things to each other. 

He returns to the livestream during which T. died. He has watched it over and over, looking for clues. 

“We never fully figured out who all was watching it.” 

The social media platforms did not provide all the information the FBI requested. 

“We believe the group was small.” 

“We hope it was small.” 

In July 2025, the Western Uusimaa Police Department in Finland released a very brief statement. According to it, the police was investigating an exceptional case from 2021-2023: a Finnish child under 15 had “been the target of grooming” in the 764 network. 

Then the police went silent. They described the case as “particularly sensitive”. 

Lead investigator Maria Hietajärvi still cannot say more than that. The child is a minor and, from the police perspective, she is a victim. 

The preliminary investigation was completed in November 2025. Its results were transferred to Germany, where the request for investigation had originated. Only then, in the fall of 2023, did the Finnish police learn that Finnish children and young people were also involved in 764. 

The case investigated by the Western Uusimaa Police is linked to the “White Tiger” case. The German prosecutor confirmed this to Yle in July 2025 and to Helsingin Sanomat this fall. The prosecutor's office in Hamburg will not provide more details. 

Hietajärvi has noted how unnoticed 764 has operated. It took a year until Bradley Cadenhead from Texas was caught. Then another three and a half years before “Trippy” and “War” were arrested. 

This year, authorities in different countries have issued new warnings about 764 and other similar groups. Pay attention to warning signs... Isolation... Long sleeves in hot weather... New arrests have been made in the United States. 

Maria Hietajärvi has been investigating online sexual crimes against children for 14 years. Finnish courts have handled numerous cases. In these, the perpetrators have been Finnish. 

She says that when people talk about grooming, they think there is an old man who sends a dick pic and says, “cutie, send some photos”. 

“But this is about something completely different:” 

She has seen the messaging of 764. 

“The conversation is quite shocking.” 

“Kys is something they use.” 

“Do you want to kys tonight?” 

Kys is an internet acronym, short for “kill yourself”. 

I want to watch in a video chat when someone kills themselves, “Felix” wrote in the summer of 2021. 

Recently, the FBI stated: In 764, many members' ultimate goal is to force their blackmailed victims to video their own suicide and livestream the video for the network's entertainment or to enhance the blackmailer's reputation. 

The FBI considers 764 a terrorist threat. According to them, it is a violent nihilistic extremist movement. In the United States, connections between 764 and some school shootings are being investigated. The FBI's message is that such groups are part of the so-called accelerationist ideology. Accelerationism aims to incite fear, driving societies into chaos and destruction. 

“It's not the first time that hard gore material and child sexual abuse are found in accelerationist content”, Maria Hietajärvi says. 

She believes that in Finland, the police should have a center where online sexual violence against children would be investigated and proactive investigations conducted. Such centers exist in Sweden and Norway. 

In Finland, online crimes against children are investigated by local police. These crimes do not fall under the National Bureau of Investigation, even though many networks are international and complex. 

Hietajärvi thinks there is a reason behind this, and it is avoidance. Child sexual abuse is such a repulsive phenomenon that no one wants to deal with it.

“People don't want to hear about it.”  “Even the media doesn't want to touch it.” 

The Hamburg prosecutor's office responds to an email in late fall 2025. 

Charges have been filed against “White Tiger”, aka Shahriar J. The number of charges has increased again, now totaling 204. Shahriar J. is accused of committing the crimes between January 2021 and September 2023. In September 2023, the police confiscated his computer. 

However, according to the prosecutor, crimes may have occurred even after this, as Shahriar J. acquired a new computer. The police only confiscated the new one in June 2025. It is still being investigated by the German police. 

Shahriar J. has over thirty underage victims in different countries so far. There may be more. 

The charges in Germany include five attempted murders. And one murder. 

It happened in a grocery store parking lot in the United States in January 2022. It was early morning, and no one else was there except 13-year-old T., who set up his phone and started video recording.

Others were hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, and they were watching. 

_________________ 

Bradley Cadenhead (“Felix”) was sentenced in the United States in May 2023 to 80 years in prison for possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material. He was 15 years old at the time of the crimes. 

Other young men involved in the 764 network have also been convicted in the United States. Dozens have been charged. Among them are “Trippy”, 20, and “War”, 21. HS does not disclose their names because the trial is ongoing. “War” has resisted extradition from Greece to the United States. 

In Britain, Cameron Finnigan (“Acid”), 19, received a six-year prison sentence in January 2025 for crimes committed in 764. 

The trial of “White Tiger”, aka Shahriar J., will begin in Hamburg in the coming months. It will be held behind closed doors. All pre-trial investigation material is classified because the victims are minors. According to the defense, Shahriar J. is innocent. 

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