UK member of 'The Com' jailed for two years after blackmailing 117 girls online
Justin Swaddle, 20, used Snapchat, Telegram and Discord to coerce teenage girls into self-harm and abuse images, purely to boost his standing in a sprawling online cybercrime collective.
Key points
- Justin Swaddle, 20, from Leeds, was sentenced to two years in prison at Leeds Crown Court after pleading guilty on 2 July to blackmail and multiple child sexual abuse offences.
- The UK's National Crime Agency identified 117 female victims worldwide, aged 13 to 17.
- Swaddle operated under the aliases 'Epstein', 'Rugen' and 'Moscow' across Snapchat, Telegram and Discord.
- He is a member of 'The Com', a loose online collective linked to sextortion, ransomware attacks on Las Vegas casinos in 2023, and the April 2025 breaches at Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Harrods.
- Investigators found images of victims with Swaddle's aliases carved into their skin.
A 20-year-old from Leeds has been sent to prison for two years after using Snapchat, Telegram and Discord to blackmail teenage girls into filming themselves self-harming and performing sexual acts.
Justin Swaddle pleaded guilty at Leeds Crown Court on 2 July. He was sentenced this week. West Yorkshire Police first arrested him in October 2023, and the National Crime Agency, the UK's equivalent of the FBI, took over the case in January 2024.
Swaddle is not a lone predator. He belongs to a much larger online scene known as 'The Com', short for Community, which the NCA and Europol describe as a loose collective of mostly young men who compete for status by hurting other young people online.
The details, first reported by BleepingComputer, are ugly. Investigators recovered images of victims with Swaddle's usernames carved into their skin.
Who did he target and how?
The NCA identified 117 female victims worldwide, aged 13 to 17. Swaddle befriended girls on social apps, coaxed them into sharing personal details or an intimate image, then used that material as leverage to demand more.
That pattern is called sextortion: blackmail using sexual images. Once he had something on a victim, he threatened to send the images to her school or parents unless she produced more extreme content. Messages pulled from his phone show he even tried to push one child into abusing a younger child on camera.
"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.
His devices also held indecent images of children as young as three.
What is 'The Com'?
The Com is not a single gang with a boss. It is a shifting network of chat groups, mostly on Telegram and Discord, where members egg each other on and swap material. Europol has broken it into rough subgroups:
| Subgroup | What they do |
|---|---|
| (S)extortion Com | Coerces minors into sexual content, self-harm, suicide |
| 764 | Grooms young people into producing explicit material |
| Cyber Com | Runs network break-ins and ransomware attacks |
| Offline Com | Encourages real-world violence and property damage |
The same broad community has been tied to serious corporate hacks. Members were linked to the September 2023 ransomware attacks on Las Vegas casinos, and to the April 2025 break-ins at UK retailers Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Harrods.
In April 2025, US authorities arrested two alleged leaders of the 764 subgroup, Leonidas Varagiannis, 21, and Prasan Nepal, 20. Both face life in prison.
What should parents and teenagers do?
The practical advice is boring but it works. If a stranger online asks for a photo, a video call in your bedroom, or personal details about your school or family, stop talking to them. If someone is already threatening you with an image, do not pay and do not send more. Tell a trusted adult and report it to the police or, in the UK, to the NCA's CEOP service. The threat almost always deflates once an adult is involved, because the leverage was never as strong as the blackmailer claimed.
One line for the operational takeaway: the perpetrators here are often teenagers themselves, chasing status in a group chat, and that changes how families and schools need to talk about the risk.
