Neo-Nazi Cult Leader Sentenced to 15 Years for Inciting Violence

Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 22-year-old Georgian national who led an international neo-Nazi group known as the Maniac Murder Cult, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison Wednesday in Brooklyn. US District Judge Carol Bagley Amon described his crimes as extraordinarily serious while stating he was not being punished for his views but for his calls to action that prosecutors said inspired real-world violence.

Chkhikvishvili, who used the online name Commander Butcher, appeared gaunt in green jail scrubs and fought back tears as the sentence was handed down.

He had distributed bomb-making instructions, poison recipes and a manifesto called The Hater’s Handbook that praised Hitler, Timothy McVeigh and Satan while encouraging school shootings and attacks on minorities and Jews. Assistant US Attorney Andrew Reich told the court the case involved systemic solicitation of violence rather than abstract rhetoric.

Prosecutors said Chkhikvishvili urged an undercover FBI agent to poison Jewish children in Brooklyn with ricin-laced candy on New Year’s Eve while dressed as Santa Claus and repeatedly called for dead Jewish kids.

Authorities linked his propaganda to the January 2025 shooting at Antioch High School in Nashville, where a student killed a classmate before taking his own life. The shooter referenced the Maniac Murder Cult and Chkhikvishvili in online writings. An Antioch student told the court by speakerphone that the shooting had permanently taken away the sense of safety at school.

A teacher’s victim statement read in court described watching a wounded student die in the cafeteria with blood splattered across the walls. The teacher wrote that Chkhikvishvili had manipulated a vulnerable boy and turned him into a self-hating murderer. Defense attorney Zachary Taylor asked for leniency, saying his client had been radicalized online as a depressed and bullied teenager.

Taylor read statements noting that Chkhikvishvili had spent nearly two years in custody reading the Bible, Greek literature and Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. Chkhikvishvili addressed the court directly, saying he had been consumed by online extremism. “I was filling my brain with garbage,” he said.

“The internet was dragging me down like a swamp. ” He added that he hoped his case would warn young people vulnerable to radicalization and expressed regret over his paternal grandfather being Jewish.

“The defendant is not being sentenced for his warped views. " — US District Judge Carol Bagley Amon, May 13, 2026 (New York Post) In a separate federal case on the same day in Los Angeles, drug counselor Erik Fleming was sentenced to two years in prison for distributing ketamine that killed actor Matthew Perry. Fleming, 56, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution resulting in death.”

Fleming sold 51 vials of liquid ketamine to Perry in October 2023, including the dose that caused the overdose, according to prosecutors. He connected the actor with Jasveen Sangha, known as the Ketamine Queen, who was sentenced last month to 15 years.

Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett ruled that while Fleming was not as culpable as the doctor who administered the drug, he was not a whole lot less responsible.

Fleming told the court he was haunted by his mistakes and expressed regret for profiting from Perry’s addiction despite knowing the risks. Perry, 54, was found unresponsive in his pool at his Pacific Palisades home on Oct. 28, 2023.

The medical examiner ruled the death an accidental ketamine overdose, with drowning and coronary artery disease as contributing factors. Fleming must report to prison by June 29 and will serve three years of supervised release afterward. Fleming was the fourth of five defendants sentenced in the conspiracy.

Prosecutors credited his cooperation with investigators, including providing information that helped build cases against others involved. >"I’m haunted by the mistakes I’ve made.