Neo-Nazi pleads guilty to ‘monstrous plots’ to poison Jewish children in NYC

NEW YORK — A neo-Nazi known as “Commander Butcher,” from the country of Georgia, pleaded guilty on Monday to hate crimes over a plot to poison Jewish children in New York City.

Michail Chkhikvishvili pleaded guilty to soliciting hate crimes and sending instructions to make bombs and ricin, a lethal poison, the Department of Justice said.

Chkhikvishvili planned to distribute poisoned candy to children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn and other attacks against minorities.

Chkhikvishvili, who was known by aliases including “Mishka,” “Michael,” “Commander Butcher,” and “Butcher,” faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and will be sentenced in March.

US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said law enforcement’s work on the case had “saved untold lives.”

“Chkhikvishvili’s monstrous plots and propaganda calling for racially motivated violence against civilians, including children, posed a grave threat to public safety,” said Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg.

Chkhikvishvili, 23, was a leader of a white supremacist extremist group known as the Maniac Murder Cult or MKY.

MKY is an international, violent extremist group that adheres to a neo-Nazi ideology that promotes violence against Jews and others. The group is based in Russia and Ukraine and has members in the US and other countries, prosecutors said.

Chkhikvishvili wrote and distributed a manifesto titled the “Hater’s Handbook” that advocated MKY’s goals and encouraged members to carry out and film violent acts. In the document, Chkhikvishvili claimed to have “murdered for the white race” and called for ethnic cleansing and violence, including school shootings, using children for suicide bombings and mass terror attacks against crowds, specifically in the United States.

Chkhikvishvili, a resident of Tblisi, Georgia, traveled to Brooklyn in June 2022. During the trip, he stayed with his grandmother and claimed to have committed hate crimes.

Since July 2022, Chkhikvishvili encouraged others, mostly through encrypted messaging platforms, to commit violence for MKY in New York and elsewhere. The messages include footage of beatings, stabbings and other attacks, as well as efforts to recruit followers who have experience with explosives and biological and chemical weapons.

Prosecutors shared images from the group showing men in Nazi uniforms and a masked individual holding a bloody ax next to a swastika.

One of those he communicated with was an undercover FBI agent who posed as a prospective MKY recruit.

In November 2023, Chkhikvishvili proposed a mass attack in New York City on New Year’s Eve that would have had an individual dressed as Santa Claus hand out poisoned candy to minorities. The scheme also involved giving poisoned candy to children at Jewish schools.

Chkhikvishvili told the agent to target the Jewish community with poison, saying “Jews are literally everywhere” in Brooklyn and suggesting an attack on “some Jewish holiday” at Jewish schools full of kids.”

“Dead Jewish kids,” he added.

Chkhikvishvili also discussed targeting Jews in the United States with the leader of another neo-Nazi group called the Feuerkrieg Division, or FKD.

“Mky is only group so far that done so many kills,” Chkhikvishvili wrote the FKD leader on an encrypted messaging app, adding that he harmed and attempted to kill a Jewish victim in Brooklyn.

New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force determined that Chkhikvishvili had worked in a Brooklyn rehabilitation facility and was employed by an Orthodox Jewish family to care for a family member.

Chkhikvishvili drafted a step-by-step plan and sent the undercover agent manuals on creating lethal poisons and gas and encouraged him to film acts of violence. Some of the plans were linked to radical Islamist groups such as the Islamic State and Chkhikvishvili repeatedly complimented jihadist ideology.

He was arrested in Chișinău, Moldova, last year on an Interpol arrest warrant, extradited to the US and prosecuted in the federal Eastern District of New York court.

His incitement to violence was linked to at least two deadly attacks. One was a January school shooting in Tennessee. The 17-year-old shooter killed one person and then himself, livestreaming part of the attack. Before the shooting, he claimed he was acting on behalf of MKY and another group.

In August 2024, a man livestreamed himself stabbing around five people outside a mosque in Turkey while wearing Nazi symbols. A manifesto by the attacker referred to Chkhikvishvili, and before the stabbings, the assailant distributed a list to the Hater’s Handbook.

Jews are consistently targeted in hate crimes more than any other group in New York City, according to NYPD data.

Separately, the Department of Justice said on Monday that a Maryland man who threatened Jewish institutions pleaded guilty to 17 counts of mailing threatening communications and eight counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs.

Clift Seferlis, 55, admitted to sending out at least 40 letters and at least two postcards, via the US Postal Service, to more than 25 Jewish institutions, including synagogues, museums, community centers, schools, nonprofits, and a delicatessen.

Seferlis sent out the threats between March 2024 and June 2025 and threatened to destroy buildings and injure people in many of the missives, the department said. Several of the letters included threats of attack by a “dangerous weapon,” fire or explosives, the department said.

The targets were located in Washington, DC, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

Antisemitism has surged in recent years, according to surveys by Jewish groups, and attacks have killed Jews this year in Boulder, Colorado, and Washington, DC.

In addition to those lethal attacks, law enforcement has repeatedly prevented attempted attacks against Jews around the US, by assailants from a wide variety of backgrounds and political affiliations.