Extremist leader pleads guilty after urging followers to carry out mass attacks

A leader of an international white supremacist group has pleaded guilty to soliciting hate crimes and sending bomb-making and ricin instructions, after previously encouraging school shootings and other acts of mass violence, according to federal prosecutors.

The plea was entered on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn, where Michail Chkhikvishvili, a leader of the Maniac Murder Cult extremist group, admitted to the charges. He had been extradited from Moldova to New York earlier this year.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said Chkhikvishvili recruited others to commit attacks, including violence aimed at Jewish and racial minority children. “His incitement of hate crimes resulted in real-world violence,” Nocella said.

According to prosecutors, Chkhikvishvili traveled to Brooklyn in 2022 and began urging members of the Maniac Murder Cult to carry out violent attacks, primarily through the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

Officials said he sent detailed instructions for creating lethal poisons, including ricin, and directed an individual, who was actually an undercover FBI employee, to carry out bombings and arsons targeting minorities and Jewish communities in New York.

Prosecutors said he distributed a manifesto known as the “Hater’s Handbook,” which encourages mass violence, including school shootings, and circulated it among followers beginning in 2021.

By late 2023, prosecutors said Chkhikvishvili was planning a mass-casualty attack in New York City on New Year’s Eve. Initial plans involved using a Santa Claus costume to hand out poisoned candy to racial minorities, later evolving into specific instructions to target Jewish schools and children in Brooklyn.

In January, a 17-year-old who killed one person and injured another at a high school in Nashville referenced Chkhikvishvili in a manifesto attributed to the attacker.

Another attacker who stabbed multiple people outside a mosque in Eskisehir, Turkey, in August 2024 also referenced him and shared the manifesto before the attack.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Chkhikvishvili planned “extensive terrorist attacks targeting Jewish New Yorkers,” including attempts to poison children. Tisch said the group’s actions reflected “extreme antisemitism rooted in Neo-Nazi ideology.”

Chkhikvishvili faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in federal prison.