Neo-Nazi gets 15 years for plotting violent attacks, including Santa poison plot
NEW YORK– The leader of an Eastern European neo-Nazi group was sentenced to 15 years in prison for trying to recruit others to carry out violent attacks against Jews and racial minorities, including a plot that allegedly included dressing up as Santa Claus to hand out poisoned candy to children.
Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 22-year-old Georgian nicknamed “Commander Butcher,” was sentenced Wednesday by a federal judge in Brooklyn. He pleaded guilty in November to soliciting hate crimes and disseminating information about making bombs and ricin.
“I recognize that my actions have caused harm by spreading hatred and violence and I am truly sorry,” Chkhikvishvili wrote in a letter to the judge last month.
His lawyer, Zachary Taylor, asked for a five-year prison sentence, citing Chkhikvishvili’s mental health issues since his teens, who “fell under the spell of violent extremist content” on social media but has since reformed. Taylor also mentioned the harsh conditions under which Chkhikvishvili was detained for almost a year in Moldova, where he was arrested in 2024 on an international arrest warrant, according to his letter to the judge.
Prosecutors described Chkhikvishvili as the leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, an international extremist group that adheres to a neo-Nazi ideology promoting violence intended to spark racial and religious war.
They said the group’s violent solicitations — promoted on Telegram channels and described in the “Hater’s Handbook” — appear to have inspired numerous real-life killings, including a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, last year that left a 16-year-old student dead.
Chkhikvishvili “repeatedly called for the killing of innocent civilians, including children, and planned to attack and terrorize Jewish communities and racial minorities in the United States,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said in a statement. “Chkhikvishvili, for example, attempted to recruit a so-called associate to dress up as Santa Claus and hand out poisoned candy to minority children.”
Since 2021, prosecutors have said Chkhikvishvili distributed the “Hater’s Handbook” to members and others.
“I am really ashamed to write Haters Handbook, I hope one day it will disappear, I wish I never wrote it,” Chkhikvishvili wrote to the judge.
Prosecutors said Chkhikvishvili traveled to Brooklyn in 2022 and began repeatedly encouraging others to commit hate crimes and other acts of violence. They said that in 2023, he solicited an undercover FBI employee to carry out bombings and arsons “with the intent of harming racial minorities, Jewish individuals and others.”
In 2024, the undercover agent was instructed “to target with poison the Jewish community, Jewish schools and Jewish children in Brooklyn,” prosecutors said in a statement.
“Chkhikvishvili sent detailed manuals on creating and mixing deadly poisons and gases, including ricin.”
