A federal court in Brooklyn convicted yesterday Michael Chkikvishvili, 21, a Georgian national, of severe hate crimes and plotting a mass-casualty attack targeting Hasidic children in New York.
Chkikvishvili, identified as the leader of the international terror group known as the “Insane Murder Cult,” admitted to attempting to poison Jewish children and distributing detailed instructions for manufacturing explosives and lethal toxins.
According to the indictment, he planned a large-scale attack intended to take place on New Year’s Eve 2024. An accomplice was to dress in a festive costume and hand out poisoned candy to children.
By January 2024, the plot explicitly targeted the Hasidic community in Brooklyn. Chkikvishvili instructed associates to distribute poisoned sweets to Hasidic children during Jewish holidays and sent step-by-step guides for producing toxins such as ricin and lethal gases. Investigators later discovered that he had been communicating with an undercover FBI agent.
In a particularly disturbing revelation, the defendant had been working at a rehabilitation facility in Brooklyn and was employed by a Hasidic family to care for an elderly relative.
In conversations with associates, he boasted: “I work for a Jewish family and they pay me to torture a dying Jew. I think I almost killed him today,” and shared photos of the victim in his hospital bed.
Beginning in September 2021, Chkikvishvili circulated a manifesto titled “The Hater’s Manual,” which encouraged mass killings and school shootings.
Since July 2022, he used Telegram to promote violent hate crimes against Jews and minorities. His propaganda inspired real-world attacks: in January 2025, a 17-year-old student killed a man at a school in Nashville, Tennessee, in the name of the “Insane Murder Cult,” and in August 2024 an assailant stabbed five people outside a mosque in Turkey while invoking Chkikvishvili.
“The defendant planned to poison children with candy around the Jewish holidays. The investigative work carried out in this case saved many lives,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. Attorney General Pam Bondi added: “Violent and racist groups such as this one pose an ongoing threat to the American people.”
Chkikvishvili was extradited from Moldova to the United States in May 2025 and faces a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.