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B.C. father warns of extremist online network 764 after his daughter was 'groomed' to commit suicide
British Columbia father, Jason Sokolowski, is warning parents about an online extremist network known as 764, which he says “groomed” his teenage daughter Penelope into committing suicide.
Sokolowski says Penelope was a gifted and creative child who loved art, amusement parks and creating digital worlds on popular gaming sites like Minecraft and Roblox, reports CTV . However, during the last years of Penelope’s life, Sokolowski says he watched her personality change.
Her performance and interest in school declined. Then she started self-harming, including cutting up her legs.
National Post has reached out to Sokolowski for comment but has yet to receive a response.
Sokolowski told the New York Post that he believes Penelope’s suicide was the culmination of grooming on Roblox. Roblox is a game platform popular among kids, with 170,000 users under the age of 13, according to company data from 2023.
Working in the film industry in Vancouver, Sokolowski separated from Penelope’s mother and moved out of the family home when Penelope was 13. He says his ex had a parenting app on her phone that tracked their daughter’s online activity, what she was watching and searching. However, he later learned of Penelope being groomed by someone linked to 764, which the RCMP says targets children and youth via social media and online gaming.
He contends that Penelope was manipulated into harming herself, as well as encouraged to abuse family pets. He was sent a video of her trying to kill their cat from a 764 member. He also told the New York Post that she sent a 764 predator a photo of her chest, offering to cut herself there, but expressed worry about going “too deep.” She followed that with an image of the predator’s Discord user name written on her chest in bloodied letters.
In other images, the numbers “764” can be seen carved into her body.
The horrors escalated into repeated suicide attempts done for an online audience, Sokolowski says.
Penelope died by suicide in February 2025, just before she turned 16.
Sokolowski has documented his journey on TikTok . He shared a discussion , recorded in September 2025, with Idaho-based cybersecurity expert Ben Gillenwater , known as Family IT Guy .
“If you have kids with internet access, you need to hear this,” Gillenwater says as he introduces their conversation.
Sokolowski subsequently confesses not to have fully understood what was happening online with his daughter. “I literally witnessed the grooming process a couple times and I didn’t see it for what it was … I didn’t realize there was this kind of monster seeping insidious into our lives that was in the room with me when I was talking to my kid.”
He points to social media and its addictive nature, where predators “are not even seen. And the grooming, most parents won’t even recognize it for what it is. Until they hear my story and other stories like it.”
His warning comes as the RCMP have announced terrorism charges against a Quebec man accused of promoting the ideology of 764 and attempting to recruit teenagers online. Jeffrey Roussel, 26, from Quebec City, is alleged to have promoted and published graphic, violent and highly disturbing content, with the aim of recruiting through a group on Telegram, according to the RCMP. His victims, not yet been identified, are mainly teenagers.
The RCMP says 764 actively targets children and teenagers via online gaming or social media platforms and popular mobile apps such as Discord, Telegram, Roblox and Minecraft.
The group has also been active in the U.S. Leaders of 764 were arrested there in April and charged with operating a global child exploitation operation, according to a release from the U.S. Justice Department , which states that “764 is a network of nihilistic violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct in the United States and abroad.”
The Justice Department’s affidavit alleges that 764 has “targeted vulnerable children online, coercing them into producing degrading and explicit content under threat and manipulation. This content includes ‘cut signs’ and ‘blood signs’ through which young girls would cut symbols into their bodies.”
The affidavit also details how “the defendants instructed others members in grooming tactics and set content production expectations for new recruits. In multiple instances, defendants threatened and caused their victims to engage in self-mutilation, online and in-person sexual acts, harm to animals, sexual exploitation of siblings and others, acts of violence, threats of violence, suicide, and murder.”
The RCMP recommends that parents watch for several warning signs , such as the use of mobile apps like Discord, Telegram or other encrypted communications platforms for which you have no visibility as a parent.
Also, family pets or other animals that are harmed or die suspiciously should be an obvious concern. As should your kids demonstrating an interest in conspiracy theories, anti-government rhetoric, or sympathy/support toward extreme messaging or online propaganda, says the RCMP.
Are they demonstrating an interest in rejecting moral constraints, together with an interest in Nazism, school shootings, serial killers or occultism? Or writing in blood or what appears to be blood, as Penelope did?
Do they have a new online “friend” or network they seem infatuated with and/or scared of? Have they received anonymous gifts delivered to your home?
Are they going through more bandages or showing evidence of cuts, carvings on their skin, stab wounds and more?
Children and youth can reach a professional counsellor at Kids Help Phone in English or French 24/7 by calling 1-800-668-6868. The service is offered in over 100 languages including Plains Cree, Severn Ojibwe, Ukrainian, Russian, Pashto, Dari, Mandarin and Arabic with the help of trained interpreters.
If you’re thinking about suicide or are worried about a friend or loved one, please contact 9-8-8: Suicide Crisis Helpline by calling or texting 9-8-8 toll free. The service is available 24/7. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911.
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