The FBI helped New Zealand Police stop an extremist's plans to carry out a mass stabbing attack. Image / Herald graphic
This article deals with the issue of child sexual exploitation and mass killing and may be distressing for some people.
Drawn into an extremist group online, a young Hawke’s Bay man talked about committing a mass killing, and distributed “depraved” videos and images showing the sexual abuse of young children.
The man also contacted a 13-year-old girl online and got her to send him sexually explicit images of herself by pretending to be a boy close to her age and offering to give her gaming tokens.
He collected and distributed thousands of videos and images of young children – some of them babies, toddlers, or of preschool or early primary school age – being sexually abused and violated by adults.
His threat to kill people came to police attention after a tip-off from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which had been alerted by a young American woman with whom he had been communicating for about two years.
The American woman was not the girl he coerced into sending him images.
Court documents say he told the young woman in America “repeatedly and in detail” about his desire to commit a mass killing, wanting to copy high-profile terrorist and extremist attacks to gain public notoriety.
Police said he planned to target either a mall or a mosque and kill men by stabbing them. He intended this to be a suicide mission.
The man’s name has been suppressed through the proceedings so far, and it remains so until a hearing in January on whether his identity can be published.
Crown counsel Megan Mitchell said the man, now 22, intended to target Muslim men particularly.
Police searched the man’s house and found two bladed weapons – a machete and a bayonet.
A police summary of facts said the man’s “extremist ideologies” and his wish to conduct a mass stabbing event was considered a “national security threat”.
When they searched his devices, police found more than 2300 files promoting the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, which he had made available on the internet.
Other videos depicted necrophilia and bestiality.
Mitchell said the images and videos were “horrific and graphic”, showing the “depraved” sexual abuse of children.
Judge Richard Earwaker described the material as “repugnant”, causing physical and emotional harm to the children involved and helping create more demand for such material.
The material the man collected included 93 hours of video. One of his devices contained more than 54,000 media files.
Today, the man appeared in the Napier District Court after pleading guilty to 13 charges, including knowingly distributing child exploitation material, possessing objectionable publications, exposing a young person to indecent material, threatening to kill and failing to comply with a computer search.
Judge Earwaker jailed him for five years and four months after allowing deductions from a nine-year starting point for his guilty plea, his youth at the time of his offending and his personal circumstances.
The man was placed on the child sex offender register for eight years.
Court documents show the man had multiple online profiles and wanted to be seen as an “edge lord” – someone who posts shocking or extreme material on the internet.
He was flagged by the Department of Internal Affairs’ Digital Violence Extremism Team, which was created after the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch to combat material online that encourages terrorism and violent extremism.
The police summary of facts said the man communicated on the Discord messaging app with a young woman in the United States for about two years between 2022 and 2024.
“Throughout their communicating the defendant had been expressing a desire to conduct a mass attack for notoriety,” the summary said.
This desire escalated when police searched the man’s house in August 2024, and he was interviewed by the Department of Internal Affairs.
“The defendant told the young woman that he planned to commit a mass stabbing attack,” the police summary said.
“He planned on doing the attack on the day he was due to appear in court on other charges.
“His plans were to target either a mall or a mosque and kill men. He intended this to be a suicide mission.”
The man told the American woman he planned to use a blade or a bayonet that he had already acquired.
The woman spoke to the FBI, who passed on the information to New Zealand Police on September 28, 2024. The police raided the man’s home later that day.
A diary page set out the man’s manifesto, saying he had been radicalised at 19 and he was a “soldier of Christ, his country, people and religion”. A Quran was discovered in his wardrobe.
One of the man’s many email addresses was linked to a YouTube channel that carried a video containing anti-Islam narratives.
In an affidavit to the court, the young man said that in November 2022, he posted a clip from the Christchurch mosque shooter’s video on Discord, where he had been playing the game Modern Warfare Call of Duty.
He said the scenes from the 2019 mosque shootings “reminded him of the game he had been playing”.
One of the representative charges of possessing an objectionable publication related to 20 media files of violent extremist content, five of which were taken from the Christchurch mosque attacks.
The man said he encountered a group online known as 764, members of which threatened to make his personal information public or “dox” him.
In a sworn affidavit, the man said he put a 15-second clip of the mosque attacks online, and was contacted by a member of 764 later, who invited him to join.
He claimed that a day or two after that, he received a request from a member of 764 telling him to distribute an image that was degrading to a young person.
After he refused, he said, he was sent a copy of his driver licence and internet IP address. He said the group threatened to publish those details.
He said he continued to post videos on behalf of a 764 member called Neo, reluctantly, so that his personal information would not be posted online.
He said he had no personal interest in the material he was sharing.
Judge Earwaker, however, said the man’s claims about why he distributed the material were “simply not credible”.
“The nature and extent of the images he was downloading and distributing clearly demonstrates an interest in both child exploitation material and violent extremist material.”
The 764 group is an online global network engaging in criminal activities including hacking, fraud, doxing, extortion, and the creation and distribution of child sexual exploitation material.
Members coerce children into performing sexual acts on camera, or making them self-harm or commit acts of animal cruelty.
The 764 users collect child sexual abuse material, and gory or violent content to create digital “lore books”, which are used as digital currency, traded and used to increase a member’s status.
Detective Inspector James Keene, of Eastern District Police, said the sentencing showed a commitment by New Zealand and overseas agencies to work effectively together to reduce the level of harmful activity.
“This individual preyed on the innocence of children by distributing horrific child abuse and exploitation images online, including personally requesting explicit images from a teenager.
“Any threats of mass harm, such as in this case, are always of concern to Police, which is why we moved quickly to arrest this man, and sought to detain him in custody.”
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.