A 27-year-old Colorado man has been indicted along with 10 other people from across the country for paying for the creation and distribution of videos made overseas of adult and baby monkeys being mutilated, tortured and killed.

The group communicated its desires for acts on the monkeys to a minor in Indonesia, according to a federal indictment unsealed Friday. That minor carried out the acts. 

Those acts included sodomizing the monkeys with small instruments and burning or cutting their genitals. 

The indictment described one video distributed within the group -- a baby monkey was taken from its mother, thrown against a cage until it died, and handed back to the mother.

The recordings were referred to as "animal crush videos" by federal investigators. Over 79 acts of extreme violence were documented in the indictment.  

The indictment did not state what species was subject to the group's whims, nor did it indicate if the video producer was part of a federal or international prosecution.

Carter Fawcett of Lakewood made four payments to a Cincinnati man for access to such videos in April 2023, according to the indictment. Fawcett messaged Nicholas Dryden of Cincinnati on Telegram in the early stages of the group's activity.

"Lemme know if you can do $70 on the 100 min of content brotha," Fawcett stated, as relayed by investigators in the indictment. "Just down on cash m but will be back up soon. Bought the last 6 vids, I'll keep buying more too."

"I can do 60," Dryden replied. "You've been loyal."

The 11 defendants include nine men and three women from Arizona, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, New York, Connecticut, Louisiana, and North Carolina. Each faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison on conspiracy charges, according to the DOJ. 

A  from the U.S. Department of Justice stated these 11 defendants are additional suspects to others in a larger investigation. Dryden and a New Jersey man were first as the primary culprits in the production and distribution of the videos. Along with the conspiracy charges, the two men face seven years each for the distribution of animal crush videos and 20 years for child sexual abuse. The latter charge stems from their direction of the Indonesian minor.