764 Arrests and Prosecutions: May 2026 Roundup

Honest answer first, because that is what a roundup is for. No single new headline sentencing landed in the 764 cases during May 2026. The month was procedural: appeals lost, competency questions settled, trial dates set. The standing federal effort against the network is large, and the verified case ledger is long, but the calendar month itself produced motion inside existing cases rather than a new defendant in handcuffs. This roundup states where the prosecutions stand as of late May 2026, and it names one widely shared case that does not belong on the list.

The Scale, in the Numbers the Government Has Disclosed

The FBI does not publish a 764 roster. It has disclosed an open-investigation count, and that count is the tightest public proxy for the network’s prosecutable footprint. By late 2025, the bureau described more than 350 open investigations tied to 764 across its field offices, up from roughly 250 earlier in the year. In February 2026, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee cited the 350 figure in correspondence with the FBI director and said it had likely grown since. The Justice Department has publicly charged dozens of people with ties to the network. The full trajectory of those numbers, and why an investigation count is not the same as a membership count, is laid out in how big is the 764 network.

The Verified Federal Ledger, as of Late May 2026

These are the network’s major federal and state cases, each anchored to a documented outcome rather than to an allegation alone.

Bradley Cadenhead, founder. Cadenhead created 764 on Discord as a Stephenville, Texas teenager and is serving an eighty-year sentence in Texas state custody. His attempts to obtain post-conviction relief have been rejected, leaving the founding sentence intact. His profile is documented in the Bradley Cadenhead founder profile.

Richard Densmore, Michigan. Densmore, known online as “Rabid,” built the 764 “Sewer” communities on Discord and was sentenced in November 2024 to thirty years in federal prison in the Western District of Michigan. At forty-seven, he is among the oldest defendants in the network’s docket, and his sentence remains one of the longest federal terms a 764 case has produced. The full account is in the Richard Densmore Michigan case profile.

Angel Almeida, Eastern District of New York. The Queens firearm arrest that the FBI credits as the thread it pulled to open its network-level investigation has not produced a verdict. In February 2026, the court found Almeida not competent to stand trial and not restorable, moving the case into civil-commitment posture rather than toward a criminal sentence. The procedural history is detailed in the Angel Almeida Queens case profile.

Baron Martin, Tucson, Arizona. Martin’s case carries the first federal terrorism charge brought against a member of 764, on a superseding indictment that pairs a child-exploitation enterprise count with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. He has been in federal custody since his December 2024 arrest, and his trial was set to begin in June 2026, making the case one to watch as the calendar turns.

Prasan Nepal and Leonidas Varagiannis, District of Columbia. Charged in April 2025 as alleged leaders of the network operating a global child-exploitation enterprise, the two face potential life sentences. Varagiannis was arrested in Greece and has contested extradition, a procedural posture that can stretch across many months.

Alexis Aldair Chavez, San Antonio. Chavez, who used the handles “Zack” and “Zack8884,” pleaded guilty as an administrator of “8884,” a splinter group related to 764, to racketeering and child-pornography counts, exposing him to decades in prison. The 8884 case illustrates the network’s defining structural problem for prosecutors: 764 sheds and renames subgroups continually, so that resolving one cell does not dissolve the ecosystem around it.

The Case That Is Not on This List

On May 27, 2026, a federal court in Washington, D.C., sentenced Ramanan Pathmanathan, a forty-year-old Toronto man, to thirty-three years for a sextortion scheme that investigators said targeted 145 children, some as young as six. The case was reported widely the same week, and the proximity in subject matter and venue invites the assumption that it belongs in a 764 roundup. It does not. Neither the charging documents nor the reporting identified Pathmanathan as a member of 764 or of any nihilistic violent extremist network. He used fake social-media profiles to coerce children directly, a horrific scheme, but a standalone one. Including it here would inflate the network’s ledger with a case the evidence does not support, and the distinction matters precisely because 764’s actual footprint is large enough that it does not need padding.

Why the Monthly Picture Looks the Way It Does

Three features of the network explain why a given month can pass without a marquee sentencing while the overall effort keeps expanding.

The cases are slow. Federal child-exploitation prosecutions involving network-level conduct require extended forensic work on seized devices, and several of the highest-profile cases have stalled on competency examinations or extradition fights rather than moving cleanly to trial. The Almeida case ran more than four years to a competency finding rather than a verdict.

The network is decentralized. 764 splinters into renamed subgroups, of which the “Sewer” and “8884” are documented examples, so the enforcement target keeps changing shape. A prosecution that closes one cell leaves the surrounding community intact under new handles, a dynamic explored alongside the network’s ideological lineage in O9A vs 764.

The footprint is international. Arrests and designations tied to 764 have surfaced across multiple countries, and those foreign proceedings appear inconsistently in any U.S.-centered monthly count. The broader documentary record on the parent network and its offshoots is collected in the Order of Nine Angles topic hub, and the network’s basic structure for new readers is set out in what is the group 764.

What to Watch

The near-term docket has at least one fixed date worth marking. The Tucson terrorism trial against Baron Martin was set for June 2026, and a verdict there would be the first test of the terrorism theory the Justice Department advanced against a 764 member. The District of Columbia leadership case against Nepal and Varagiannis turns on the resolution of the extradition fight before it can reach trial. And the FBI’s open-investigation count, last disclosed above 350, is the figure to track for whether the network’s prosecutable footprint is still growing. This roundup will update as those cases move.