A 20-year-old Hilo man who was the leader of a violent online sextortion ring was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in federal prison for possession of child pornography.

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Senior U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor sentenced Kalana Limkin, co-founder of an online violent nihilistic extremist group known as “Cultists,” to the maximum sentence allowed by law. She also ordered Limkin, upon his release from prison, to serve an additional 20 years of supervised release — the federal equivalent of probation.

Limkin, who was charged with the offense in December 2023 and originally pleaded not guilty, changed his plea to guilty — without a plea deal — on Feb. 23.

According to information presented at sentencing, Cultists became a well-known and highly recognizable brand within the larger violent nihilistic extremist community in part due to the shock value of the content and activities within its servers and digital spaces.

Cultists members collaborated to victimize children in a systematic attempt to trigger social collapse and topple the current world order, according to the feds.

Limkin, who had no prior criminal record, admitted to being the founder of Cultist, asking minor girls to send him nude photos of themselves, and being in possession of child pornography files on his cellphone, which the feds seized.

Five child porn files were found, the complaint alleges, including prepubescent girls being raped. One of the images Limkin uploaded was of a nude, prepubescent girl with a naked man standing over her and “rape” written in black ink on her midsection.

By desensitizing them to gore and child sexual abuse material, Cultists groomed these minors for future violent behavior, according to the feds.

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A minor victim interviewed in June 2023 by the Children’s Justice Center of Oahu told the interviewer that she met Limkin through Omegle — a formerly free, anonymous web-based chat service that was shut down in November 2023.

That program connected to Limkin’s server on Discord, and he showed the minor child pornography of a 5-year-old girl being raped.

The victim told the interviewer Limkin would make girls “cut his name into their body,” and that he had a collage of pictures depicting that.

Limkin asked the minor — whose age wasn’t disclosed — for photos of her in her underwear. It’s unclear whether she complied. The girl reported Limkin to authorities after he posted child pornography on 4Chan, an image-based internet messaging board where users can post anonymously. He also posted Nazi and child porn memes in his Discord server.

Limkin explained to another of his minor victims that he “took advantage of the mentally unstable because they were easy to manipulate.”

Limkin extorted a third victim with her own sexual abuse material to convince her to commit suicide. In the recorded video chat, Limkin proclaimed, “We want her to die. Yes, we do. That’s the whole point of this.”

“Limkin represents a growing and depraved group of violent extremists who target vulnerable juveniles online for the sick pleasure they derive from causing their young, impressionable victims to commit acts of self-harm, at times even encouraging them to commit suicide,” Hawaii U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said in a statement Friday. “We will tirelessly pursue and charge those who weaponize the internet to gain possession of child pornography and the reprehensible pleasure they seek to gain from urging children to commit acts of self-harm and mutilation.”

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Hawaii Police Department detectives assisted the FBI in the investigation.

Email John Burnett at [email protected].