Federal authorities said Tuesday that the leader of a neo-Nazi maniacal murder cult was planning a New Year’s Eve hate attack in which thugs dressed as Santa Claus would hand out poisoned candy to minorities in New York City.
Federal authorities say a Georgian national, Mikhail “Commander Butcher” Tsikbishvili, 20, also plotted to traffic poisonous candy to children at a Jewish school in Brooklyn and sent them information on how to make castor bean bombs and ricin-based poison.
“Dead Jewish kids,” he messaged an undercover FBI agent, according to federal court records.
“MMC will be bigger than al-Qaeda once it is destroyed,” he boasted in a video he plans to release after the attack.
But Tsikvishvili’s hateful Santa fantasy never came to fruition.
International authorities arrested Tsikbishvili in Moldova on July 6 acting on an Interpol warrant, said officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District.
A federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted Tsikbishvili on Monday on a charge of incitement to a hate crime, among other felonies, following an investigation by the FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, records show.
“As alleged, the defendant attempted to recruit others to carry out violent attacks and murder in furtherance of his neo-Nazi ideology,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.
“His goal was to spread hatred, fear and destruction by encouraging bombings, arson and even the poisoning of children with the intent to harm racial minorities, Jewish communities and homeless people.”
The 22-page criminal complaint unsealed this week details Tsikbishvili’s role as a leader and recruiter within the “Maniac Murder Cult,” a neo-Nazi group based in Russia and Ukraine that promotes violence against racial minorities, Jews and other so-called “undesirables.”
According to the criminal complaint, in 2022, while living with his grandmother in Brooklyn, Tsikbishvili published a manifesto called the “Hatred Handbook” in which he proudly declared that he had “committed murder for the white race.”
According to the indictment, he bragged to another neo-Nazi leader about trying to torture and kill an elderly Jewish man, who matches the description of Nicholas Welcker, 33, who led the Feuerklieg Division and was recently sentenced to 44 months in prison. Make death threats To a Brooklyn journalist.
Records show that Chikbishvili worked at a rehabilitation facility in Brooklyn and was employed by an Orthodox Jewish family to care for the man, who is now deceased, the lawsuit said.
In the messages, he bragged about “getting paid to torture dying Jews,” according to the indictment.
The federal government has not accused Tsikbishvili of causing the man’s death, according to the complaint.
According to the complaint, in 2023, an undercover FBI agent posed as a potential recruit and began exchanging messages with Tsikbishvili, who gave him instructions on how to make a bomb from fertilizer and how to set off an arson attack that would “leave no trace even in New York City.”
Starting in November, Tsikbishvili began encouraging undercover agents to carry out an attack even larger than that of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting spree in 2011.
“Specifically, Chikvishvili developed a plan to murder racial minorities and others in New York City by disguising himself as Santa Claus on New Year’s Eve and distributing poisoned candy,” the complaint states, which includes step-by-step instructions sent to him by “The Butcher.”
According to the indictment, Tsikbishvili used undercover agents to manufacture ricin, a deadly poison that features prominently in the storyline of the TV series “Breaking Bad.”
After New Year’s Eve passed without a hate attack, Tsikbishvili changed his plans, focusing on poisoning children on a “Jewish holiday,” according to the lawsuit.
“In additional conversations, Chikhvishvili said he was considering traveling to the United States, which he said was a ‘good place for illegal grinding.'”[g]According to the lawsuit, he sent messages saying he would “poison half of New York,” “bomb New York” and “kill everyone there,” and later made death threats to some.
If convicted, Tsikvishvili faces up to 20 years in prison.
