A 22-year-old Georgian national, Michail Chkhikvishvili (aliases “Mishka,” “Michael,” “Commander Butcher,” “Butcher”) pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to soliciting hate crimes and distributing instructions to manufacture bombs and ricin, in what investigators say was a sprawling global neo-Nazi extremist operation.

The chilling details laid out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) reveal a violent, ideologically-driven conspiracy at odds with the view of hate groups as fringe outrage: this was an organized plan for mass atrocities.

Chkhikvishvili, extradited from Moldova to the United States in May 2025, faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.

According to prosecutors, his extremist network — the so-called Maniac Murder Cult — distributed a manifesto titled “Hater’s Handbook”, extolling mass violence, school shootings and terror tactics such as bombs, poison and livestreamed attacks.

Beginning no later than July 2022, Chkhikvishvili repeatedly used the encrypted app Telegram to solicit others to commit acts of violence on behalf of his cult.

In November 2023, the plot evolved into a New Year’s-Eve mass casualty attack in New York City: an individual disguised as Santa Claus handing out candy laced with poison to racial minorities.

By January, the target focus shifted explicitly to Jewish schools, Jewish children and other minorities across Brooklyn. Chkhikvishvili provided manuals on mixing lethal poisons (including ricin), assembling bombs and executing arsons.

Prosecutors linked the cult’s ideology and “Hater’s Handbook” to real-world violence, including a January 2025 school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, involving a 17-year-old who claimed to act on behalf of the Maniac Murder Cult; and an August 2024 stabbing outside a mosque in Eskisehir, Turkey, by a man wearing Nazi-symbol tactical gear and citing Chkhikvishvili’s writings.

The U.S. Attorney for EDNY, Joseph Nocella, Jr., underscored that the defendant’s “vile actions … recruiting others to commit acts of violence against Jewish and racial minority children” were no abstraction — “his incitement of hate crimes resulted in real-world violence.”

An FBI spokesperson added that Chkhikvishvili’s “monstrous plots and propaganda … posed a grave threat to public safety.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)