What is 764? Inside the online network now linked to South Africa

A 16-year-old appeared in the Malmesbury magistrate's court this week on 15 charges linked to the online network 764

And so, hopeful, little Jay, of Gig Harbor in Washington, went looking for one on Discord, a popular messaging and chat platform widely used by gamers and online communities.

"I'm looking for friends, preferably LGBTQ, for crochet buddies," Jay wrote, according to his father, Colby, who recounted the post to ABC News in an interview last year.

Instead, he found people who would spend the next hour telling him to kill himself.

Jay is one of thousands of children around the world being targeted by an online network called 764.

More than 16,000km from where Jay lived, 764 had found its way to SA, where police arrested a 16-year-old boy earlier this week at a house in an upmarket golf estate in Malmesbury.

Malmesbury is the main town of the Swartland, a wheat-farming district about 65km north of Cape Town.

International independent analyst Dr Dale McKinley said 764 was started in 2020 by Bradley Cadenhead, a bullied 15-year-old who had dropped out of school and spent most of his time in his bedroom in Stephenville, Texas.

He named it after the first three digits of his postal code and ran the network on Discord.

Cadenhead was arrested in August 2021 and is serving an 80-year prison sentence.

McKinley said Cadenhead targeted a particular type of child, looking for young people who were isolated, vulnerable and searching for friendship or acceptance online.

"It's disaffected youth, essentially, that is being drawn, youth that may be isolated, socially awkward," McKinley told IOL .

"They're drawn into these things because they provide some degree of purpose and they're very confused," he said.

Anti-crime activist Yusuf Abramjee told IOL that members target children on social media, gaming apps and chat servers, where they build relationships with them before coaxing them into sending an explicit photograph or video.