FBI Arrests 18-Year-Old in ISIS Plot to Attack Mall of America

Federal agents arrested an 18-year-old Minnesota man on Oct. 6, moments after he handed over $600 in cash for an AK-47, four 30-round magazines and roughly 200 rounds of ammunition that prosecutors say he planned to use to kill dozens of people at the Mall of America.

Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, of Richfield, is charged with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition while knowing or having reason to believe they would be used in a felony or a federal crime of terrorism, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.

The seller was an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of ISIS. Investigators had rendered the rifle inoperable before the exchange. Agents took Mohamud into custody at gunpoint in a public park in Richfield, several miles northwest of the mall, right after he climbed out of the vehicle carrying the bag.

No attack took place and no one was injured during an investigation that ran nearly two years.

The date on the calendar was Oct. 24

Mohamud settled on Oct. 24 as his attack date, the complaint says, because the mall had a Hmong Arts Celebration scheduled that day and it would pull a large crowd. The Hmong community is Minnesota's largest Asian ethnic group.

An FBI agent's sworn complaint says Mohamud repeatedly confirmed in chat messages that he intended to attack and kill non-Muslims at the mall on that date. When the confidential informant asked whether he was serious about going through with it, Mohamud answered, "yes i am 100% sure," and added, "I would have backed out by now if I wasn't sure," according to the complaint.

He told the source in September that the celebration was the moment he wanted, prosecutors say.

A duffel bag, $600 and a rifle that could not fire

The Oct. 6 meeting played out in a vehicle. The undercover employee handed Mohamud a large duffel bag holding an AK-47 rifle and four magazines, plus a container with 200 rounds of ammunition, prosecutors said. The agent told him he was a member of ISIS and asked about his plans. Mohamud again described a shooting at a festival at the mall, the affidavit says.

The weapon described in the affidavit was a Norinco AK-47, Model Mac-90 Sporter, with four magazines and about 200 rounds of 7.62x39 caliber ammunition. The FBI had already made the rifle inert.

A Richfield resident, Mike O'Brien, told local media he was at a nearby dog park and watched the takedown happen. He said he saw as many as 30 agents move in, with vehicles emptying out and the area locked down fast.

It started with messages about Somalia

Mohamud first drew FBI attention in December 2024, the same month a confidential source began trading messages with him. At that point, the complaint says, he was talking about traveling overseas to fight for al-Shabab in Somalia. Both al-Shabaab and ISIS are U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations.

By December 2025, he was expressing interest in supporting ISIS instead, court documents say. He eventually decided he could not afford the trip abroad and would attack in Minnesota on the group's behalf.

The exchanges went on for hundreds of messages across social media and encrypted platforms, running from December 2024 until the day of the arrest. Some of the contact happened over messaging apps and TikTok. At one point he sent the source a selfie-style video, delivered through Discord, in which he pledged allegiance to ISIS and its current leader.

What the complaint says about the mall

In July 2026, according to the charges, Mohamud wrote that he wanted to hit the mall "because its owned by Jewish so if I kill even 30 people no one would go there anymore." The same message continued: "I'll just go grab assault rifle, bomb too complicated, kill maybe 30-60 people insha Allah and have 260 ammo."

Other messages described wanting to kill "kuffar," a term meaning disbelievers that is used for people who are not Muslim. In one exchange cited by prosecutors, he talked about getting a "gun here and just start killing a bunch of white ppl."

He also told the undercover employee that part of his motivation was anger over a deadly shooting at a San Diego Islamic center in May 2026, saying he was "angry at the bad treatment of Muslims."

He studied other attacks, investigators say

Court filings describe a teenager who looked closely at past mass killings. Investigators allege he watched footage of the 2016 Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando and expressed admiration for Omar Mateen, the Pulse shooter, along with the man behind the New Year's attack in New Orleans.

Federal officials said he wanted to copy earlier mass shootings, naming the June 2016 Pulse attack, the 2025 New Year's Day attack in New Orleans and the December 2025 Bondi Beach shooting in Australia.

The Mall of America was not his only idea. The complaint says he also floated Valleyfair amusement park in Shakopee as a possible target, and considered buying two pistols online before focusing on the mall and a rifle.

Agents went to his house in May 2025

Seventeen months before the arrest, the FBI tried the direct approach. In May 2025, after being alerted to extremist material he was sharing online, agents went to Mohamud's home. He had recently turned 17.

His mother told the agents he was not home from school yet and called his father, the complaint says. The father declined to speak with them and said he would pass their contact information to his lawyer.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said authorities do not believe the parents understood how far their son's radicalization had gone. He used the news conference to speak to parents directly, saying that if federal law enforcement shows up at your door with a warning that your son or daughter is being radicalized, "those are warnings that ought to be heeded."

In court in a yellow jail uniform

Mohamud made his initial appearance on Wednesday, Oct. 7, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright in federal court in St. Paul. He wore a yellow jail uniform.

He told the judge he did not have a job, did not own a house or a car, and had no money in the bank. Siri Carlson McDowell, a federal public defender, represented him. She and relatives who were at the hearing did not speak afterward.

Rosen said Mohamud is an American-born U.S. citizen of Somali descent. The criminal complaint refers to Somalia as the homeland of his parents.

What prosecutors and the FBI said

"The FBI yesterday arrested, and today we have charged, an individual who was planning a mass casualty attack in support of ISIS at the Mall of America later this month," Rosen said. Agents, he added, "were able to detect a threat and disrupt it before the defendant carried out his intention to kill, in his words, maybe 30 to 60 people, as we allege in far greater detail in the complaint."

Rosen also described him as a radicalized young man who needed to be watched.

Christopher Dotson, the FBI's special agent in charge in Minneapolis, said the messages documented "the idolization of ideologically motivated violence, a callous disregard for the sanctity of human life, a blind hatred of people of other faiths, and a cold commitment to carrying out his vision of violence in our community." Instead of finding the means to kill, Dotson said, the defendant found a team of FBI agents waiting to arrest him.

FBI Director Kash Patel said in the Justice Department's announcement that the man had obtained a weapon he hoped to use in a mass casualty attack supporting ISIS, and that the bureau stopped those plans.

Who worked the case

The investigation was run by the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Bloomington Police Department, with assistance from IRS Criminal Investigation. Bloomington is the city where the mall sits.

Trial Attorney Ryan White of the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Bejar are prosecuting.

The Mall of America said it was grateful to the FBI and its law enforcement partners for identifying and disrupting the threat, and that the safety and security of visitors and employees remains its highest priority.

The Minnesota backdrop

Tens of thousands of people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, a community that traces back to refugees who began arriving in the 1990s. Over the years, several people from the state have been charged with attempting to join militant groups abroad.

The case against Mohamud rests on a single federal count tied to the gun buy, not the attack itself, because the attack never happened. The sting operation stretched across nearly two years of monitoring.

Charges are accusations. Mohamud is presumed innocent until proven guilty.