Under the terms of the plea deal, Tinajero faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, but the agreement indicates the government and the defendant agreed upon 25 years as an “appropriate disposition.” Tinajero also pleaded guilty to online enticement, three counts each of production and distribution of child sexual abuse material, five counts of interstate communications of threats, cyberstalking, and conspiracy to murder. Tinajero awaits sentencing, which is scheduled for Aug. 26, in a Kentucky jail outside of Louisville.
Tinajero’s case is the first 764 prosecution in which a defendant has been charged with racketeering, and he is the first 764 member to agree through a plea agreement that the terrorism enhancement applies to his crimes, Department of Justice spokesperson Shannon R. Shevlin told Raw Story.
Two trial attorneys from the Counterterrorism Section of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division are prosecuting the case.
“This is an aggressive move by the DOJ against what they refer to as the ‘764 enterprise,’ one which suggests similar prosecutions may not be far away,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Raw Story. “Strategically, pursuing these networks through racketeering and criminal enterprise statutes may offer prosecutors a way to fill the gap in our domestic terrorism statutes.”
Shevlin declined to comment on whether she anticipates additional arrests, but a Department of Justice press release indicates that the FBI continues to investigate the case.
“The Department of Justice is fully committed to stopping 764’s acts of terrorism and disrupting the 764 network,” Shevlin said.
A factual basis attached to Tinajero’s plea agreement names a dozen other individuals by their online usernames who are alleged to be “members of the 764 enterprise,” including a person nicknamed “Vitaly” who allegedly plotted with Tinajero to kill a teenage girl in Louisville identified in court documents as “Jane Doe 1.” The girl was 14 years old at the time Tinajero first contacted her, according to a court filing.
The factual basis alleges that Tinajero and “Vitaly,” (also known as “Lazzarus” and “Laz”) — who is named as a “co-conspirator” — “agreed that one of them would commit the murder of Jane Doe 1.” The document describes a series of messages exchanged between the two in September 2023 about Tinajero’s plans to obtain a firearm and drive to Louisville from Arkansas to murder the girl, and then to dispose of her body. The factual basis alleges that “Vitaly provided Tinajero with information on obtaining a barrel that could be used to dissolve Jane Doe’s body in acid.”
Tinajero allegedly attempted to buy an AR-15 from a gun dealer in Conway, Ark., and investigators were able to link a phone number he listed on his application to purchase the firearm to one that he used to text the victim.
Tinajero’s exploitation of the girl began with asking her to send pictures of her feet through a messaging app, according to the factual basis statement and he quickly persuaded her to send photos of her legs spread while wearing underwear and then with her genitals exposed. Two months later, after the girl stopped responding to his texts, the government alleges that Tinajero told her he knew all her family members’ “names and where they work.” Later, he allegedly texted her: “Imma f--- your life up if you don’t text me today” and “Imma find your ass and rape u.”
The factual basis statement describes Tinajero’s participation in discussions among 764 members about criminal activities that go beyond the specific charges in his case. The government alleges that Tinajero participated in an online chat in which “Vitaly” aka “Laz” and others described as “known and unknown co-conspirators,” instructed a girl “who Tinajero and others believed was as young as 12 years old to repeatedly cut herself with a knife.” The court document goes on to say that “it was Tinajero’s understanding that Laz and their co-conspirators intended to cause the 12-year-old female to kill herself through the self-mutilation.”
The factual basis statement indicates that Tinajero, Vitaly and other co-conspirators worked together to obtain child pornography from at least three other minor females in Kentucky who are identified as Jane Does.
Tinajero’s lawyer did not respond to an email from Raw Story inquiring as to whether Tinajero intends to cooperate with the government and help the FBI identify his alleged co-conspirators. A plea supplement was filed under seal in the case on Tuesday.
Other online discussions among 764 members, according to the government, involved “previous attacks made on people and places as well as future attacks on heavily populated areas such as malls or other large gatherings, LGBTQ+ events and gatherings, schools, public places, and police stations.”
President Trump’s allies, including Kash Patel — the nominee to lead the FBI — have politicized domestic terrorism investigations, particularly ones that involve white supremacy. Patel wrote in his 2023 book Government Gangsters in a chapter entitled “Made-Up Domestic Terrorism” that “to pump up public support for their attacks on conservative Americans, the FBI leadership has been reportedly pushing agents to artificially inflate data about domestic terrorism to make the problem seem much worse than it is.”
Patel’s criticism was framed around the FBI’s investigation during the Biden administration of more than 1,500 people who took part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and subsequently received blanket pardons from President Trump.
Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, a chief strategist of the MAGA movement, complained in the aftermath of a deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans by an ISIS supporter that former FBI Director Christopher Wray was too focused on “radicalized white nationalists, white separatists.”
A shift in language used to describe the 764 network suggests Department of Justice officials under Pam Bondi, the new attorney general, are sensitive to the criticism. The factual basis for Tinajero’s plea agreement filed on Tuesday described 764 members as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” But a “superseding information” document filed later on the same day that outlined the expanded charges to include racketeering conspiracy merely describes 764 as “violent extremists.”
In contrast, the Department of Justice appears to be leaning into the effort initiated under Bondi’s predecessor, Merrick Garland, to prosecute 764 as a terrorist group. Under Garland’s leadership, a federal prosecutor filed a sentencing memorandum in October 2024 for Richard Densmore, a 47-year-old 764 member who pleaded last year to sexually abusing a child, that stated the case would ordinarily have warranted a terrorism enhancement, but that the defendant had already reached his sentencing cap.
Densmore was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and in his sentencing memorandum the prosecutor predicted that in the future 764 cases the government would seek an upward departure under the terrorism enhancement. To support use of the terrorism enhancement, the prosecutor cited a paper by Marc-André Argentino, a senior researcher at the Accelerationism Research Consortium, that pointed to a “significant threat nexus between terrorist and violent extremism content… and child sexual exploitation and abuse material’ and 764’s ‘ultimate goal… to groom individuals for acts of terroristic violence.”
The charging document filed against Tinajero on Tuesday echoes the formulation in the earlier case by describing an enterprise that not only perpetrates vile abuse against children, but also poses a national security threat.
“Members of 764, both individually and as a group, methodically target vulnerable, underage populations across the United States and the globe,” the document reads. “Members of 764 use online social media communications platforms as mediums to support the possession, production, and sharing of extreme gore media and child sexual abuse material with vulnerable, juvenile populations.
“Members of 764 seek to desensitize young people to violence, breaking down societal norms regarding engaging in violence, and normalizing the possession, production, and sharing of explicit CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) and gore material to corrupt and groom people towards future violence.”
