Neo-Nazi group charged with grooming California kids, making them produce child porn
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LOS ANGELES — Two men were arrested Tuesday, and are among four who have been charged with running a neo-Nazi "child exploitation enterprise," that allegedly groomed more than a dozen children across the world and coerced them into creating and distributing child pornography of themselves.
Colin John Thomas Walker, of New Jersey, and Clint Jordan Lopaka Nahooikaika Borge, of Hawaii were arrested as part of a grand jury indictment. They've been charged along with Rohan Sandeep Rane, of France, and Kaleb Christopher Merritt, of Texas.
Together, the four were part of an international online group that promoted Nazism, and pedophilia, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The group allegedly operated out of San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties.
The indictment alleges that Walker, Rane and Merritt ran and hosted the group's online servers and were in charge of membership in the group.
The group would target vulnerable children, according to documents, and convince them to join their servers. Once there, the group would expose the children to violent sexual material, degrade them and more, in order to convince them to produce self-harm and sexual content of themselves, both on video and live stream, the DOJ alleges.
Authorities said that once the group got some of the videos, if the children refused to produce more, they would threaten to share the videos they had, or expose their info to the public or their families. The indictment says that the group sometimes followed through on such threats.
Walker and Borge were expected to make their first appearances in court on Tuesday.
The other two suspects, Rane and Merritt, have been charged with similar crimes in the past. Rane has been in custody in France since 2022 on child exploitation charges. Merritt is currently serving a 50-year sentence in Virginia state prison for child sex abuse.
If convicted, all four men would face between 20 years to life in prison.
The Los Angeles Police Department and San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department are two of the 10 law enforcement agencies around the world investigating this case.