Those arrested could face a life sentence if convicted. Investigators arrested Collin John Thomas Walker, a 23-year-old from New Jersey and Clint Jordan Lopaka Nahooikaika Borge, a 41-year-old from Pahoa, Hawaii Thursday morning on charges of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, which prosecutors say was carried out in connection with a Neo-Nazi organization. The group targeted at least 16 children, including two in California’s San Bernadino County, according to prosecutors.

They now face federal charges alongside two others: Rohan Sandeep Rane, a 28-year-old from Antibes, France and Kaleb Christopher Merritt, a 24-year-old from Texas. Rane has been in French custody since 2022 on charges of child exploitation and other related crimes, while Merritt is serving a 50-year sentence in Virginia for child sex abuse crimes committed in 2020 and 2021. The men are members of the internet Neo-Nazi group CVLT, an organization “dedicated to…online child exploitation,” prosecutors allege in the indictment. The group names “neo-Nazism, nihilism and pedophilia” as their core principles, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Rane, Walker, and Merritt “acted as leaders and administrators” for the group with the goal of “[creating] an army of sadist followers,” prosecutors say. The group worked to coerce children into creating pornography through “various means of degradation, including…extremist and violent content,” according to prosecutors. The group coerced children into “increasingly dehumanizing acts,” which included punching themselves, drinking their own urine and using razor blades to carve CVLT members’ names into their skin, prosecutors allege.

If the children said they would tell their parents or the police, or hesitated in any way, CVLT members would blackmail them by threatening to release explicit photos of them to their family and friends, according to prosecutors. The organization even carried out these threats against some of the children who escaped, they added. “CVLT specifically targeted vulnerable victims, including ones suffering from mental health challenges or a history of sexual abuse,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

“CVLT members’ coercion escalated to pressuring victims to kill themselves on a video livestream,” the statement continued. The organization allegedly operated in Los Angeles and San Bernardino County. “The defendants here are alleged to have committed horrific acts against children,” Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally said in a statement. “There is nothing more important than protecting our youth.”.