US man sentenced to 77 years for child sexual abuse tied to online extremist group

A 27-year-old Tennessee man described by the US justice department as a “nihilistic violent extremist” was sentenced to 77 years in prison on Wednesday for his targeting of girls online as part of the 764 network, an online group the FBI calls a form of “modern-day terrorism”.Kyle Spitze of Friendsville received the federal sentence on Wednesday for “production of child sexual abuse material, abetting the distribution of animal crushing videos, and possessing and accessing with the intent to view”, the justice department said in a statement.“The Department has pledged to take out online predator networks and today’s sentence is one step toward justice for the families and children harmed by 764,” said Todd Blanche, the US attorney general.“These types of crimes are the worst of the worst: preying on vulnerable children in the name of a violent and twisted ideology. Federal law enforcement will not stop until nihilistic violent extremist groups and their depraved members are identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”Kash Patel, the FBI director, said Spitze’s arrest and conviction represented the agency’s “renewed mission to bring these predators to justice”.John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for the national security division of the justice department, said Spitze, also known as “Crimhn”, “Criminal” and “Criminaloli” online, was an original member of the networks known as “Harm Nation” and “764” that were committed to bringing about the downfall of society.Eisenberg identified the groups’ ambition to bring about what they term to be societal collapse through “terrorism, specifically by targeting children and other vulnerable people and extorting them to engage in criminal sexual conduct, self-harm, and mass casualty events”.Spitze was arrested in 2024 after investigators searched his cellphone and found images and videos of two minor victims. One had “crim” written on her chest in her own blood and later told the FBI she had been threatened by Spitze to produce the images for him.Spitze later pleaded guilty to two counts of production of child sexual exploitation material, one count of abetting the distribution of animal crushing videos and one count of possessing and accessing with the intent to view child sexual exploitation material.Prosecutors said Spitze had “made sport of placing young minors in your own special ‘hell’ simply for the crime of being an insecure teenaged girl”. They said Spitze had claimed online to have “groomed” more than 2,600 victims in the US and overseas and two ultimately took their own lives, believing “they would never be rid of his evil”.