An 18-year-old Richfield man was charged Wednesday with receiving a rifle and ammunition to carry out what federal prosecutors say was a planned ISIS-inspired mass shooting at the Mall of America.
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud is charged by federal complaint with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition to commit a federal crime of terrorism, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota said.
The FBI arrested Mohamud on Tuesday, Oct. 6, shortly after he paid an undercover FBI employee about $600 in cash for an AK-47 rifle, four 30-round magazines and about 200 rounds of ammunition, according to the complaint. The FBI had made the rifle inoperable before the sale, but the ammunition was live, the complaint says.
Mohamud made his first court appearance Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright. He was booked into the Sherburne County Jail on a federal hold Tuesday afternoon, Patch reported, citing jail records.
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According to the complaint, the FBI began investigating Mohamud in December 2024, when he started exchanging hundreds of messages with a confidential FBI source on Telegram, Signal, Discord and TikTok. He repeatedly said he wanted to travel to Somalia to join a terrorist group, and that if he could not afford the trip, he would carry out a mass-casualty attack in Minnesota, the complaint says.
In one January 2025 exchange, when the source asked how school was going, Mohamud wrote that if he failed, it was “straight to just killing kuffar” and that he would “probably save up for a gun,” according to the complaint. An FBI agent wrote that “kuffar” is a derogatory term for non-Muslims.
By July 2026, Mohamud wrote that he did not have enough money to travel and would “do attack here,” the complaint says. He wrote that he might buy pistols online and go to the Mall of America or Valleyfair around Christmas, and later said he wanted to “kill maybe 30-60 people” at the Bloomington mall because he believed it was owned by Jewish people, according to the complaint.
In August and September, Mohamud discussed buying an AK-style rifle and asked about recruiting others from an online group to join him, the complaint says. He also wrote that if he were stuck in Ohio, where he spent part of August, he would rent a truck and drive it through a crowd.
In September, Mohamud named Oct. 24 as the day of the attack, according to the complaint. When the source asked whether there would be a big gathering, he replied that there would be Asian people and other non-Muslims celebrating, and sent a link to a Hmong Arts Celebration at the Mall of America, the complaint says.
That month he also sent the source a selfie-style video of himself pledging allegiance to the leader of ISIS, and wrote that he thought he could carry out an attack like the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, according to the complaint.
On Oct. 4, Mohamud sent a video of himself counting $601 in cash to show he could pay for the rifle, the complaint says. At the recorded Oct. 6 meeting near his home, he told the undercover employee, whom he believed to be an ISIS member, that he planned a shooting at a festival at the Mall of America. He was arrested at gunpoint shortly after he got out of the employee’s vehicle with the rifle, magazines and ammunition, according to the complaint.
“As alleged in the criminal complaint, Mohamud took substantial steps to plot to murder innocent people in the name of ISIS,” U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen said.
The case was investigated by the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Bloomington Police Department, with help from IRS Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
A criminal complaint is an accusation. Mohamud is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
