Content Warning: Self-Harm
Alexis Aldair Chavez got 40 years this week. A federal judge in San Antonio handed the 19-year-old that sentence, plus lifetime supervised release and a $10,000 restitution order, for racketeering and child sexual exploitation charges connected to the “764” network. If you read Friday’s post about Ryan Catello, you already have the broad shape of what these groups do. Chavez is a much uglier, much more organized example of it.
According to the DOJ’s own account, Chavez ran the “8884” corner of the network under the online handles “Zack” and “Zack8884.” He wasn’t some kid who got pulled into somebody else’s group and did what he was told. Court documents describe him as an administrator, someone who built status within 8884 by producing “content,” which is the sanitized word prosecutors use for coerced footage of children hurting themselves and each other on camera.
Starting in October 2023, Chavez and a co-conspirator tried to get a minor girl to overdose on pills during a video call so they could film the attempt. Two months later he coerced a girl overseas into cutting herself on camera. By the end of December he’d moved on to forcing a victim to carve his own name into her skin, coercing another to cut her tongue, and pushing a third to set her own arm on fire during a livestream, all of it circulating through the 8884 channel for other members to watch.
Somewhere in there, he also had a cat tortured and killed on camera, because apparently that’s part of the résumé too. The Justice Department’s National Security Division is treating this as domestic terrorism-adjacent activity rather than a garden-variety CSAM case.
The DOJ describes 764 and its offshoots as “Nihilistic Violent Extremist” groups, or NVEs, which is federal-speak for people who don’t want money or territory or even attention in the traditional sense. What they want is societal collapse, and they treat the abuse of children as a kind of training exercise for it.
Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg put it bluntly, saying these organizations target kids as part of a broader mission to spread terror and that the groups ultimately want nothing less than the destruction of society. That’s the Justice Department’s official characterization of a group whose members recruit teenagers into filming each other’s suicide attempts.
None of which stopped Chavez from being a complete coward the second real consequences showed up at his door. When the FBI executed a search warrant at his home in July 2024, agents say Chavez tried to get rid of his phone by chucking it over a neighbor’s fence, presumably hoping that would make the CSAM on it disappear along with the case against him. It didn’t work. Agents recovered the phone anyway.
Guys like this always fold the instant a badge is in the room. Online they’re directing other people’s kids to set themselves on fire for clout; in person, they’re launching their evidence into somebody’s backyard and hoping nobody notices.
Chavez didn’t just claim membership in some vague 764 mythology. He led “8884,” a specific offshoot with its own name, its own internal hierarchy, and its own private teaching chat where members explained coercion tactics to each other. He also communicated with a completely separate offshoot called “7997.” That’s two more made-up strings of digits, both apparently satellites orbiting the same “764” brand, and there’s nothing stopping a third kid from spinning up “867” or “5309” tomorrow with the exact same playbook.
The tactics are copyable because there’s no proprietary structure to protect. Nobody has to be jumped in, nobody has to prove loyalty to a chain of command that predates them, and nobody answers to leadership that could discipline them for going rogue.
Compare that to an actual organized crime outfit. Claim membership in a specific motorcycle club or a real mafia family without the right people vouching for you, and you’ll find out fast that there are consequences for borrowing a name you haven’t earned. Claim to be “764” and the only barrier to entry is a Discord account and a willingness to be monstrous on camera.
764 isn’t in some hierarchical criminal syndicate the FBI can dismantle by arresting the guy at the top, because there is no guy at the top. It’s diffuse, it’s self-replicating, and it’s running through exactly the platforms parents assume are harmless because their kids are “just playing games.” Discord and Roblox keep coming up in these cases for a reason.
Parents remain the first and, honestly, often the only line of defense here, not just against their kid getting recruited into being the next Chavez, but against their kid becoming one of his victims instead. Ask who they’re talking to. Ask what servers they’re in. It’s not paranoia. It’s the bare minimum, and cases like this one keep proving it.
(Sources)
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