CVLT (organization)

Last updated
CVLT
Also known asCult
FounderRohan Rane
LeadersColin Walker, Kaleb Merritt
Foundation2019
Dates of operationstill active
Country France
Group(s) 764 (organization)
Active regionsWorldwide
Ideology Neo-nazism
Nihilistic extremism
Part of The Com

CVLT, also known as Cult, [1] is an international Neo-Nazi and nihilistic online organization that was responsible for acts of child exploitation. Several of the organization's leaders were arrested in US for producing child pornography and coercing minors to commit self-harm. According to police, CVLT has exploited approximately 2 minors in California and 16 minors around the world in total. [2] [3] US Department of Justice described it as “an online group that espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism, and pedophilia as its core principles”. [4] CVLT is affiliated with The Com, a broad network of international cybercriminals. [5] CVLT became known after one of its leaders, Kaleb Merritt, was caught and convicted of raping a girl and taking inappropriate pictures of her. [6]

Contents

CVLT was created in 2019 by a French-Indian school student, named Rohan Rane. CVLT started out as a Discord community with a couple hundred members who were followers of various far-right ideologies. Rohan then started attracting underage girls from over the world to join his community and chat with him and CVLT's members. Eventually, he managed to convince them to send him nude photos of themselves and used them to blackmail them into doing self-harm including suicide before being arrested in 2021, other members of CVLT were arrested in 2025. [7] [8] [9] CVLT is considered to be predecessor of 764, an influential child exploitation network. [10] [11] Its founder, Bradley Cadenhead, was inspired by CVLT to create the network, specifically after talking with one of CVLT's members in a Minecraft server. [12]

History

Background

CVLT was created somewhere in 2019 by a then 23-year old top business school student named Rohan Rane, an Indian immigrant living in Antibes, France. Reportedly, he was bored due to COVID-19 lockdown so he decided to create his own community on Discord to chat with people, he named it CVLT. Rohan said that the community was a "place where he came to proclaim his hatred of Jews and Muslims", the members of CVLT mostly had neo-nazi and fascist ideologies. CVLT amassed over 150 members, some were not able to be identified by FBI during the investigation. [7] Rohan entered France in 2016 for business studies, he was a son of a rich family, with his father being a CEO of a business. An FBI agent got interested in CVLT in the spring of 2020 as he was investigating a 15-year-old American girl who unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide by slashing her throat after communicating with Rohan. It was revealed to him that the girl sent Rohan nude photos of herself after he formed a romantic relationship with her and gained her trust. After he had the photos, Rohan blackmailed her to send him more and if she didn't obey him, he threatened to send the photos to the girl's relatives. The agent sent his findings to French law enforcement, which prompted a judicial investigation on October 6, 2020 by OCRVP. Rohan was taken into custody the next year, on April 6, 2021, and is awaiting his sentence in solitary confinement. [13] [14] He turned 28-years old as of 2025 and is charged with "acts of torture and barbarity", "corruption of minors in an organized gang" and "extortion in an organized gang". [15]

When Rohan was arrested, the police searched his home, they discovered more than a dozen videos of his victims on his phone and computer. The recordings showed young girls between the ages of 11 and 16, filming themselves doing acts of self harm. Their acts included cutting themselves, strangling themselves with belts and drinking bleach while crying. While in custody, Rohan described himself as a "psychopath devoid of any emotion", he said that he is interested in Fascism and Aryan Brotherhood. He also said that he felt excited by seeing "blood and violence" of his victims. Le Figaro reported that Rohan authored a guide titled: "How to Get a Girl", in the guide, he described himself as a guru and bragged about attracting dozens of young girls. The guide explained his ways of attracting them, it said that he threatened to ruin the lives of his "prey" and forced them to mutilate themselves by shoving blunt objects into their private areas, commit suicide or to eat feces . Rohan also said that all "western feminists" have rape fantasies. [16] [17] Rohan was permitted access to his phone during his incarceration, which he used to continue his activities. In an interview with investigators, Rohan defended himself by saying that all of the girls filmed were adults who performed the actions willingly and that everything they did was staged, including their expressions of pain. [18] He also confessed to targeting girls of Jewish and Muslim origin, as well as "feminists who denounced Hitler or Mussolini". [19]

Organization

In a Reddit post before he was caught, Rohan described CVLT as “dark and sadistic”, he said that he made his "slaves" cut his name on their bodies and that everything he does is "legal", he added that the "ultimate goal" of CVLT is to "create an endless supply of masochistic people to satisfy my sadism and my cult is existing for that very reason”. [20] [21] Two men, Colin Walker and Kaleb Merritt acted as leaders of CVLT, they were responsible for hosting and maintaining CVLT's online servers and controlling its membership. Both of them were arrested and charged with one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise in 2025. [4] Kaleb Merritt was also one of the first CVLT's members and its prominent child groomer, he used online nicknames "eterrorist", "o9a", and "evil". One of CVLT's affiliated groups, led by Bradley Cadenhead, broke off and became known as 764. Before creating 764, Cadenhead produced child exploitation videos of him mutilating himself or committing animal abuse, his online name was known as "brad764", "felix" and "felix764" in the CVLT community. Some groups that broke off from CVLT have neo-nazi and accelerationist ideologies, mimicking the style of Terrorgram network. AAST is one of CVLT's neo-nazi splinter groups, some of the group's members reportedly took part in Russian invasion of Ukraine on the side of Russia and post about in on Telegram. [20] [22] According to Grey Dynamics, both CVLT and 764 are successors of even older organization, Order of Nine Angles, and share its ideology (neo-Nazism, satanism and western esotericism). [12]

Rohan used Instagram and other social medias to promote CVLT, including Roblox. After the victim joined the community, he manipulated them into sending sexual photos of themselves before using them to blackmail them. [20] [23] CVLT targeted mostly vulnerable children and made them watch NSFW videos to desensitize them to violence and sadism, [24] the examples included animals being tortured to death or women being raped on camera. [25] Rohan's demands to the girls he blackmailed included requests to cut his name or Nazi swastikas on their skin, masturbate using knifes, drink bleach or eat their own hair, if they didn't comply, he promised the victims to reveal the photos to their relatives, sometimes CVLT would carry out the threats. All of the acts were recorded on webcams and broadcast live on CVLT Discord server. [14] [26] Other acts included victims punching themselves, calling themselves racial slurs and in extreme cases CVLT members swatting them or making them commit suicide on livestreams. [27] [21] According to a prosecutor, other unnamed suspects may have participated in CVLT's activities. [24]

Throughout its history, the organization managed to sextort approximately 16 children around the world, including two children living in San Bernardino County, California. [28] [9] The countries where victims of Rohan lived included Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, and Estonia. [18] Martín Estrada, former prosecutor in California, said that there may be hundreds more unidentified victims based on the amount of child porn videos CVLT made. [21] Police said that the victims were known to have a history of sexual abuse-induced trauma or mental health issues. CVLT was a member of The Com, an international cybercriminal network made of various groups, extremist groups of The Com are known to carry out similar crimes. CVLT was described by law enforcement as a neo-Nazi group, however, an unnamed cyber security expert quoted by Rolling Stone , said that the group only used it for shock value and to look more provocative while not genuinely believing in Nazism. [29] [30]

Investigation and arrests

Mugshot of Kaleb Merritt Kaleb Meritt Mugshot.jpg
Mugshot of Kaleb Merritt

In 2021, CVLT and its splinter group 764 started being investigated by law enforcement after Rohan was arrested in France and a man by the name of Kaleb Merritt, one of CVLT's leaders living in Texas, was arrested and convicted of kidnapping and raping a minor, he is currently serving 33 years in Pocahontas State Correctional Center. [10] [31] Reportedly, Merritt communicated with an underage girl on CVLT Discord server and convinced her to run away from her family to have sex with him the woods, the police found Merritt and the girl here and arrested him. The girl later said that Merritt made her cut his name into her leg and pressured her to send him inappropriate photos of herself to prove her "devotion" to their relationship. [32] [33] He was later charged with violating four more children. [30] The next year, in 2022, all remaining high-profile members of CVLT joined 764 and resumed doing their crimes using CVLT's methods. [10] [34]

On January 2021, Riley Williams, participant of January 6 Capitol attack who stole the laptop of Nancy Pelosi, bragged about her crime on a CVLT-affiliated Discord server. She was later arrested and sentenced to 3 years in prison. [20] On April 2021, 21-year old CVLT member Richard Ehiemere was arrested in East London by Metropolitan Police for possessing 29 indecent images of children on his phone. National Crime Agency were investigating him since he was 17-years old, the age when he joined CVLT Discord server. [35] Ehiemere was charged and convicted on two counts of fraud and three counts of sharing indecent images of children on CVLT server that he visited 383 times, he was sentenced on May 2025, receiving 12 months in prison, 18 months suspended and 10 years of restrictions. [36] [37] On December 13, 2023, FBI arrested 18-year-old Kalana Limkin for possession of child pornography. His court records showed that he was a former member of CVLT and 764, he also confessed to being the founder of splinter group Cultist while in custody. [38] [6] During this year, FBI issued warnings about 764 and its subgroups, which included CVLT. [39] On December 11, 2024, 20-year-old Baron Martin was arrested and charged with production of child pornography and cyberstalking on Discord. He was member of CVLT and 764. [40]

On February 2025, 2 members of CVLT in the US were arrested on one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. The arrestees were Clint Borge, 43-year old man living in Pāhoa, Hawaii and Collin Walker, 23-year old man in Bridgeton, New Jersey. The police also charged two leaders of CVLT who are already incarcerated, Rohan Rane and Kaleb Merritt, with the same crime. The 2 men will be sentenced to either 20 years in prison or life without parole if found guilty. [41] [3] The arrest operation was initiated after a student of Iowa State University, on November 2020, reported to police that a person he met online in 2018 was trying to coerce and abuse him. Two months later, a female investigator assigned to the case started investigating the IP address of the suspect in Hawaii. She managed to track the owner of the IP addresses using its banking data, and revealed the suspect to be Clint Borge. She executed a search warrant of his residence and interrogated him on August 2021. [42] She then called Crimes Against Children Task Force to help her with the case, the organization later managed to connect Borge to HSI-led case in California, involving four CVLT members, one of whom was still unidentified. She informed HSI about Borge and they identified and connected him to the group. The investigation took 4 years to complete. [43]

See also

References

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