Federal authorities in Minnesota say they stopped a planned mass shooting at the Mall of America weeks before it could happen, and they did it by selling the man they suspected his rifle. On Wednesday, October 7, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota charged Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, 18, of Richfield, with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit a federal crime of terrorism. FBI agents arrested him on Tuesday, and he made his first appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright on Wednesday, the Justice Department says. As the department itself notes, a complaint amounts only to an allegation, and Mohamud has not stood trial.
The sting played out in a parking lot. On Tuesday, October 6, an undercover FBI employee who posed as a member of the Islamic State group met Mohamud at a public park in Richfield, several miles northwest of the mall, the AP reports. According to the Justice Department, the agent handed over an AK-47 assault rifle, four 30-round magazines, and about 200 rounds of ammunition for about $600 in cash, and during the sale Mohamud reaffirmed his plan to shoot people at the Mall of America. The FBI had rendered the rifle inert before the handoff, the department says. The charging document identifies the weapon as a Norinco AK-47, model Mac-90 Sporter, and says agents arrested him at gunpoint after he left the undercover employee’s vehicle with it.
The case grew out of an investigation that ran almost two years. According to the FBI agent’s sworn complaint, a confidential informant began exchanging “hundreds of bi-directional messages” with Mohamud in December 2024 across several social media and encrypted messaging apps. In those messages, the complaint says, he first talked about traveling to Somalia to join the militant group al-Shabaab and fight on its behalf, or else carrying out a mass-casualty attack in Minnesota. By May 2025, agents felt worried enough to visit his home. His mother told them he had not come home from school yet and called his father, who declined to talk and said he would pass their contact information to his lawyer, the AP reports, citing the complaint.
In July 2026, the complaint says, Mohamud told the informant he lacked the money to reach Somalia and would act at home instead. “I will prepare here in America,” he wrote, according to MPR News. He floated buying two pistols online and attacking the Mall of America or the Valleyfair amusement park in Shakopee around Christmas, the complaint says. He told the informant he wanted to hit the mall “because its owned by jewish [sic],” according to the complaint, and he cited the antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, as inspiration, according to the complaint and CBS News. Last month, he settled on October 24, when the mall hosts the Hmong Arts Celebration for Minnesota’s largest Asian community, and sent the informant a link to the event, the Star Tribune and the AP report. In another message, he wrote, “I just walk in and shoot,” after watching video of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, CBS reports. He also sent a selfie-style video on Discord in which he pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS, investigators say.
Officials described a young man they had tracked for a long time. Rosen called Mohamud a radicalized young man who needed watching and said agents managed to “detect a threat and disrupt it before the defendant carried out his intention to kill, in his words, maybe 30 to 60 people,” CBS News reports. FBI Minneapolis Special Agent in Charge Christopher Dotson said Mohamud stood “100-percent committed” to the plot and that “Mohamud allegedly sought martyrdom in carrying out his plans to murder innocent civilians,” according to MPR News and CBS. In Washington, FBI Director Kash Patel said in the department’s release that the suspect “allegedly obtained a weapon he hoped to use in a mass casualty attack in support of ISIS, but this FBI arrested him and put a stop to his plans.” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said Mohamud allegedly wanted to emulate the Pulse attack and the 2025 New Year’s Day truck attack in New Orleans.
Rosen used the news conference to send a message to families. Referring to the rebuffed 2025 visit, he told parents across Minnesota and the country that if federal agents come to warn them that a son or daughter has started to radicalize, they should “heed those warnings,” CBS reports. He also said Mohamud acted alone, has no gang ties, and, though born in the United States, calls Somalia the homeland of his parents. Tens of thousands of people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, and over the years federal prosecutors there have charged several with trying to join militant groups, the AP notes.
In court, Mohamud wore a yellow jail uniform and told the judge he had no job, no car, and no money, the AP and MPR News report. Federal public defender Siri Carlson McDowell represents him; she and his relatives declined to comment after the hearing, according to the AP. A woman waiting outside the courtroom identified herself to MPR News as his mother but declined to say more. A preliminary hearing stands set for 10 a.m. on October 19, MPR reports. The Mall of America said in a statement that it maintains “multiple layers of security, both visible and behind the scenes, and will continue to work closely with local, state and federal law enforcement partners.”
The FBI, its Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Bloomington Police Department ran the investigation, with help from IRS Criminal Investigation, the Justice Department says. Trial Attorney Ryan White of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Bejar will prosecute the case.
What the desk will watch: whether a grand jury returns an indictment, since the government filed only a complaint so far; what the October 19 hearing reveals about the informant’s role over nearly two years of messages; how the defense responds to a case built on a sting in which the FBI supplied the only weapon; and whether the Mall of America and the Hmong Arts Celebration change their plans for October 24.
