Cyberstalking arrest signals shadowy network's 'startling shift' to 'real-world violence'
Marek Cherkaoui, a 21-year-old New Jersey man, was charged with cyberstalking, the FBI said, for allegedly extorting a 13-year-old girl to cut herself, by threatening to release personal information.
Allegations against the member of the nihilistic online network 764 range from extreme psychological abuse of children to promoting mass-casualty attacks.
The case is only the most recent sign of what experts describe as a shift in online nihilist tactics, from typically pursuing sextortion to advocating and planning for offline violence.
One analyst warned of an accelerating “pivot towards real-world violence,” representing “a startling shift in the network’s tactics.”
As described by the FBI, in January the girl targeted by Cherkaoui expressed regret for hurting herself but told online acquaintances she didn’t want her parents to find out.
Cherkaoui continued to torment her, telling her she needed to cut herself as punishment for being fat, the FBI said.
“Fat fat fatty fat r-----d fatty,” he allegedly wrote. “You need to slit your wrists.”
In March, the FBI said, the girl told online acquaintances she was “doing pretty well” and was happy the channel where Cherkaoui and associates organized their abuse had been taken down.
“I’m free… NO MORE HARMING MYSELF,” she added.
But Cherkaoui found her, and he and an associate threatened to expose her if she didn’t cut herself again.
“YOU NEED TO DO IT AGAIN,” Cherkaoui wrote in May. “THIS TIME DO IT LIVE ON CAMERA.”
The girl livestreamed herself making multiple cuts on her right arm, the FBI says.
In June, the FBI raided Cherkaoui’s home outside Atlantic City and seized his phone.
Obtaining a new phone, the 21-year-old asked an associate for help obtaining a gun, federal court documents said.
According to the FBI, in late September the new phone was used to send disturbing texts.
One praised a boy who injured two classmates in a Colorado school shooting before killing himself. Another complained that Jews were destroying the world, adding: “School [s]hooters are the only good.”
Cherkaoui is alleged to have said 764 was his favorite extremist group because it targets “minority kids,” adding that “marginalized kids are a very good high-value soft target.”
The group and affiliates should be “removing the foreign-born children as a form of population control and increasing the white share of the population by removal of other competing ethnic groups,” Cherkauoui allegedly said.
According to the FBI, Cherkaoui “purchased books regarding the manufacture of explosives, body armor, zip ties, a trench coat, ski masks, and tactical gear,” many of which items “were seized from his home in a June 2025 search.”
Last week, when the FBI arrested Cherkaoui at his home, agents “found writings in which [he] discussed and planned murder and terroristic acts, including a multi-step plan that involved joining ISIS and returning to the United States to commit acts of terrorism,” the Department of Justice said in a press release.
‘Threats, blackmail, and manipulation’
Cherkaoui’s alleged evolution from extorting self-harm from minors to plotting terror attacks mirrors a larger shift in the 764 network detailed by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a global nonprofit dedicated to safeguarding democracy.
Released before Cherkaoui’s arrest, the ISD report highlights four 764-related arrests since May.
That month, in Washington state, the FBI and local authorities disrupted a plot by a 14-year-old to carry out an attack at a mall.
In what the FBI called “an alarming amount of indicators of a cogent path to violence,” authorities discovered a map of the mall, a route to follow, and a plan to use a chlorine bomb to incite panic, followed by shooting people as they left a movie theater.
In Kenosha, Wis. in June, the ISD reports, a 12-year-old boy went on an arson spree thought to be a 764 initiation rite.
In Brooklyn Center, Minn., in July, a 20-year-old man stabbed an unhoused woman, laughed when confessing to police, and “became very upset when he learned the victim would survive.”
In Newark, Calif., in August, an 18-year-old man livestreamed the stabbing of a restaurant worker.
Law enforcement and extremism researchers have warned of the threat posed by 764 and similar groups.
In September 2023, an FBI public service announcement said online groups were targeting minors through “threats, blackmail and manipulation to control the victims into recording or live-streaming self-harm, sexually explicit acts, and/or suicide.”
The announcement said groups were targeting “minors between the ages of eight and 17 … especially LGBTQ+ youth, racial minorities, and those who struggle with … mental health issues, such as depression and suicidal ideation.”
‘Power vacuum’
Researchers have monitored incidents in Europe as potential harbingers of U.S. crimes.
In Romania in April 2022 a 17-year-old 764 member randomly murdered a 74-year-old woman.
In Sweden in October 2024, a 14-year-old with co-membership in 764 and allied group No Lives Matter (NLM) allegedly carried out a string of stabbings.
Now, experts say, 764 in the U.S. is shifting towards targeted mass violence.
“The pivot towards real-world violence which we have observed in the 764 network over recent months is a startling shift in the network’s tactics and a significant expansion of a threat posed by the network to the public at large,” said Barrett Gay, an ISD analyst.
The report attributes the shift to a leadership vacuum after the DOJ arrested Prasan Nepal, of High Point, N.C., and Leonidas Varagiannis, an American living in Greece.
Nepal and Varagiannis allegedly produced extortion manuals and required prospective members to commit increasingly extreme acts of child exploitation.
“Rising to fill the power vacuum left by the arrest of Nepal and Varagiannis were younger ‘new-gen’ members more interested in violence than sextortion,” the ISD report states.
Researchers “assess that this new leadership cohort, which includes prominent NLM-aligned figures, may be using their influence to bring the practices of nihilistic-violence subcultures into the US-based 764 network.”
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