Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 22-year-old Georgian national who called himself “Commander Butcher,” was sentenced by a federal judge in Brooklyn on Wednesday after pleading guilty to soliciting hate crimes and distributing information about manufacturing explosives and the lethal toxin ricin.
Prosecutors described Chkhikvishvili as the leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, an international extremist group that embraces a neo-Nazi ideology and promotes violence intended to ignite a racial and religious war. The group’s communications, which were distributed through Telegram channels and compiled in a document called the “Hater’s Handbook,” have been linked by federal authorities to multiple real-life killings, including a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2023 that killed a 16-year-old student.
“The defendant repeatedly called for the murder of innocent civilians, including children, and schemed 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 after the sentencing.
According to court records, Chkhikvishvili traveled to Brooklyn in 2022 and soon began urging others to carry out attacks. In 2023, he solicited an undercover FBI employee to commit bombings and arsons targeting racial minorities and Jewish people, prosecutors said. The following year, the same undercover agent was directed to target Jewish schools and children in Brooklyn with poison. Prosecutors said Chkhikvishvili distributed detailed instructions for creating and mixing lethal substances, including ricin.
The sentencing followed Chkhikvishvili’s guilty plea in November 2025. His attorney, Zachary Taylor, had urged the court to impose a five-year sentence, arguing that his client had been a teenager who “fell under the spell of the violent extremist content” online but had since reformed. Taylor also pointed to harsh conditions Chkhikvishvili endured during a nearly yearlong confinement in Moldova, where he was arrested in 2024 on an international warrant.
In a letter to the judge filed last month, Chkhikvishvili expressed remorse. “I acknowledge that my actions have brought harm by spreading hatred and violence and I’m truly sorry for that,” he wrote. He added that he was “very ashamed” of authoring the Hater’s Handbook, writing, “I hope one day it will disappear, I wish I never wrote it.”
The 15-year sentence was handed down by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Federal law enforcement officials did not disclose the identity of the undercover employee involved in the investigation.