"Justin Swaddle targeted young and vulnerable victims all over the world to abuse and scare them into carrying out shocking self-harm and sexual activity, purely to gain popularity with his peers online," said NCA operations manager Danielle Pownall.
Leeds Crown Court sentence: two years for blackmail and sextortion
Justin Swaddle, 20, of Leeds — who used the online aliases "Epstein," "Rugen," and "Moscow" — was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to multiple child sexual abuse offenses and blackmail at Leeds Crown Court on July 2. Swaddle was first arrested in October 2023 by West Yorkshire Police, and the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) took over the investigation in January 2024.
Scope of the crimes: nearly 120 victims and images across an age range
The NCA identified 117 female victims worldwide, with ages recorded from 13 to 17. Investigators recovered images on seized devices showing children ranging from three to 17 years old. The agency reported indecent images categorized in Categories A to C — with Category A described by the NCA as the most severe — and numerous images showing self-harm injuries. Some victims had Swaddle's aliases carved into their skin, the NCA said.
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End the scrambleCoercion, blackmail, and the methods used
The NCA's findings describe a pattern of grooming, trust-building, and coercion. Swaddle collected private information from victims, then threatened to share intimate images or notify schools and parents unless further content was supplied. Telegram messages recovered from Swaddle's device included an attempt to incite a child to sexually abuse a younger child and record it, with explicit threats to leak indecent images if more material was not produced.
The Com collective: subgroups, arrests, and links to other crimes
The case sits within a wider pattern tied to "The Com" (short for Community), a loose-knit online cybercrime collective that Europol has described as recruiting and grooming victims through online platforms and coercing them into self-harm, violence, and production of child sexual abuse material — often via blackmail. Europol has identified multiple subgroups, including Offline Com (property damage and violence), (S)extortion Com (coercion of minors into sex crimes and encouragement of self-harm or suicide), Cyber Com (network intrusions and ransomware), and a subgroup called 764, noted for grooming young people into producing explicit content for extortion.
Enforcement actions tied to The Com have been significant: two alleged 764 leaders, Leonidas Varagiannis (21) and Prasan Nepal (20), were arrested in April 2025 and now face life in prison for operating an international child exploitation ring. Europol reported that a year-long operation called "Project Compass" in February led to 30 arrests and linked 179 suspects to The Com, and a multi-week July operation flagged 4,340 URLs for removal. Europol has also linked The Com to ransomware attacks, including Las Vegas casino breaches in September 2023 and breaches against UK retailers Marks & Spencer, Co-op, and Harrods in April 2025.
What this means for the NCA, Snapchat/Telegram/Discord, and victims' families
- NCA and UK law enforcement: the Swaddle conviction is the product of a months-long NCA probe and shows how coordinated investigative work can aggregate evidence from seized devices and messaging platforms to identify large numbers of victims globally.
- Snapchat, Telegram, and Discord (as named platforms): the case underlines how aliases and recruitment across these platforms were integral to the offense pattern; platform operators will be asked to act on flagged content and cooperate with takedown and tracing efforts, as seen in Europol's multi-week URL removal activity.
- Victims' families and communities: the recovered material — images of self-harm, threats to expose intimate images, and attempts to coerce sexual violence — highlights acute physical and psychological harm to children and teenagers and the cross-border reach of online grooming.
The sentence handed down at Leeds Crown Court closes one criminal chapter against an individual within a broader online ecosystem. But the record in this case — 117 identified victims, images spanning ages three to 17, explicit Telegram instructions attempting to incite child‑on‑child abuse, and links between The Com and other criminal activity — underscores how single actors can operate inside larger, dispersed criminal networks. The authorities named in the case have produced results: arrests, prosecutions, and URL takedowns. The remaining question the facts leave on the table is how enforcement and platform action will keep pace with the rapid creation, sharing, and re-emergence of harmful material across services and jurisdictions.
