NCA Warns of Sadistic Online “Com” Networks

Online networks of “sadistic” teenaged boys pose a growing physical and cyber-threat to the UK, the country’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned.

The agency’s newly published National Strategic Assessment claimed that these “Com” networks typically operate on social media and instant messaging platforms and engage in a wide range of criminality, including cyber-attacks, fraud, extremism, serious violence and child sexual abuse.

Such networks are characterized by English-speaking young men who share extremist, violent and child abuse material and often coerce victims into harming themselves and others, the NCA said. However, they’re also responsible for ransomware attacks, data breaches and social engineering, the report claimed.

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The NCA said that phishing, vishing and SIM swapping are the most popular ways these nebulous actors usually compromise their victims.

Reports of the threat increased six-fold in the UK between 2022 and 2024, according to the NCA. The agency estimated that thousands of offenders and victims exist in the UK and other western countries, exchanging millions of messages relating to sexual and physical abuse.

However, the NCA added that, although there’s an “increasing threat” from young homegrown cybercriminals, “these make up a small proportion of the overall threat picture,” which is dominated by actors from countries like Russia.

That is not to underestimate the scale of the threat, especially to young girls, who are often groomed by malicious actors and coerced into harming or sexually abusing themselves, siblings and pets, the NCA claimed.

Profit, Notoriety and Status

Perpetrators are motivated not just by gratification, notoriety and status, but also profit, it said. Membership of such networks is fluid, hence the range of criminality committed by offenders.

The agency pointed by way of example to the case of Richard Ehiemere. In February, he was convicted of fraud and indecent images of children (IIOC) offenses committed when he was 17 and linked to a prolific online harms group. A month earlier, 19-year-old Cameron Finnigan was jailed for assisting suicide, possession of IIOC, a terror offence, and criminal damage.

“This is a hugely complex and deeply concerning phenomenon. Young people are being drawn into these sadistic and violent online gangs where they are collaborating at scale to inflict, or incite others to commit, serious harm,” said NCA director general, Graeme Biggar.

“These groups are not lurking on the dark web, they exist in the same online world and platforms young people use on a daily basis. It is especially concerning to see the impact this is having on young girls who are often groomed into hurting themselves and in some cases, even encouraged to attempt suicide.”

Last month, US investigators arrested two members of a neo-Nazi affiliated group known as “CVLT,” as part of a wider Europol-coordinated crackdown on Com networks.

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