Alleged leader of ‘crazy murder cult’ charged with plotting to kill Jews

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn announced an indictment Tuesday. comprehensive felony indictment against a 20-year-old man they say is the leader of a violent Eastern European skinhead gang linked to a number of attacks and assaults overseas, some of them fatal. The gang, known as the Maniac Murder Cult or MKY, is linked to com/764 pedophile networkwith at least one murder in Romania directly linked to MKY.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, also known as “Commander Butcher,” “Michael,” and “Mishka,” was arrested on an Interpol warrant on July 6 in Chișinău, Moldova, for allegedly plotting to incite attacks on homeless people, Jews, and other racial minorities in New York City, distributing explosives-making instructions, and making violent threats in online conversations with an undercover FBI agent. A plot that prosecutors said he hatched with the undercover FBI involved poisoning Jewish children by handing out tainted candy while dressed as Santa Claus on New Year’s Eve 2023.

Chkhikvishvili remains in custody in Moldova—which has cooperated with the United States in the past on extraditions of non-citizens—and has yet to be extradited to the United States and make his first court appearance. He has not been appointed an attorney. If convicted, he faces a possible sentence of decades in a U.S. prison.

Federal authorities accused Chkhikvishvili of trying to incite the undercover agent to carry out further attacks with sharp weapons or petrol bombs and that he had stated that the planned attack would be “a bigger act than Breivik,” a reference to Anders Breivik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi who killed 77 people in 2011.

According to the FBI, MKY adheres to “the neo-Nazi ideology of accelerationism and promotes violence and acts of violence against racial minorities, the Jewish community, and other groups it considers “undesirable.” Like other accelerationist militants such as Atomwaffen Division And BaseMKY seeks to destabilize society through violence and terror. It was founded in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro by Yegor Krasnov and is accused of carrying out numerous murders and attacks in both Russia and Ukraine. On its Telegram channels, MKY members glorify direct violence and distribute instructions on how to carry out violent attacks and shootings, inflict maximum damage on victims, and how the perpetrator can cover his tracks. Carrying out and recording such an attack is a criterion for admission to MKY.

There are extensive ties between MKY and 764. That alliance was developed by Chkhikvishvili himself, notably through his contacts with two 764 members nicknamed “Xor” and “Kush,” both of whom have not yet been identified. “Tobbz,” a troubled young German who killed an elderly woman and stabbed a man in 2022, also joined MKY, according to the report. Der Spiegel magazine And Recorder.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York is also prosecuting two related cases: the child abuse and CSAM distribution case against 764 member Angel Almeida, whose arrest in fall 2021 was the federal government’s first look into the com world, 764 and MKY; and the case against Nicholas Welker, the alleged former leader of the neo-Nazi group Feuerkrieg Division, who sentenced in April for threatening a journalist in Brooklyn. According to court records, Welker and Chkhikvishvili communicated from July 2022 to March 2023, when Welker was arrested and charged.

Chkhikvishvili, a Georgian citizen, was in the United States in 2022, according to a affidavit by FBI Special Agent Erica Dobin of the New York City Joint Terrorism Task Force. US authorities said he visited his girlfriend in California in March and April of that year, information the FBI learned after interviewing the young woman about her virulent neo-Nazi social media posts. Soon after, Chkhikvishvili traveled to Brooklyn, where he stayed with his grandparents and worked at a rehabilitation facility, caring for an elderly Orthodox Jewish patient. “I am working at a private rehab center with a Jewish family,” he texted another neo-Nazi in July 2022, according to the criminal complaint. “I am paid to torture a dying Jew, I think I almost killed him today.” The government said Chkhikvishvili sent multiple images of the patient to his extremist friend. The patient died later that year, although the government did not allege that Chkhikvishvili caused his death.

It is unclear when Chkhikvishvili left the United States. Federal prosecutors said his residence was Tbilisi, Georgia, although he was arrested in a Balkan country across the Black Sea.

According to prosecutors, as he allegedly urged the undercover agent to commit violence and record it, Chkhikvishvili repeatedly emphasized the lethal violence that MKY members used in their attacks. “We kill them,” he allegedly wrote to another extremist, comparing MKY to another neo-Nazi group, referring to a “live action role-playing game.” Even as he allegedly plotted a mass poisoning with the undercover FBI agent, prosecutors said, Chkhikvishvili did not shy away from the potential “heat” the undercover agent warned him it would bring to MKY: “That’s exactly what we want,” he wrote in response.