FBI Arrests Minnesota Teen After He Bought a Rifle for a Mall of America Attack

Federal agents arrested an 18-year-old Minnesota man Tuesday after he paid cash for a rifle he told an undercover employee he would use to kill dozens of people at the Mall of America.

The criminal complaint identifies him as Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, a U.S. citizen of Somali descent who lives in the Twin Cities. He is charged with knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition while knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, they would be used to commit a felony and a federal crime of terrorism. The rifle agents handed him had been rendered inert. The ammunition was live.

The investigation began in December 2024, when Mohamud started messaging a confidential FBI source about traveling to Somalia to join the Islamic State or al-Shabaab, both designated foreign terrorist organizations, and then carrying out an attack. Over hundreds of messages he said that if he could not get overseas he would attack in the United States. He settled on the Mall of America on Oct. 24, the date of a Hmong arts celebration, and told the source he meant to kill non-Muslims. Asked if he was serious, he replied, “yes i am 100% sure,” and added, “I would have backed out by now if I wasn't sure,” the complaint says. He also said, “I can’t wait until I kill kuffar man.” Prosecutors said he recorded a video pledging allegiance to ISIS and its current leader, and told the undercover employee he chose the mall in part because it has Jewish owners. He put the death toll at 30 to 60 people.

The source later put him in contact with a man he believed was an ISIS gun supplier. The man was an FBI undercover employee. On Oct. 6 that employee met Mohamud in Minnesota. Mohamud paid $600 in cash for a Chinese-made Norinco AK-47, four 30-round magazines, and about 200 rounds. During the meeting he outlined the festival shooting, prosecutors said. Agents arrested him at gunpoint in a Richfield parking lot as he stepped out of a vehicle with the weapons in a duffel bag. The mall is in Bloomington, several miles away. He had not entered it with a weapon.

“This was a radicalized young man who needed to be watched,” U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said. Agents “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.” FBI Special Agent in Charge Chris Dotson said that when the bureau has credible evidence someone is seeking the means for a violent attack, “we act to disrupt the threat immediately.”

Concern was high enough in May 2025 that agents went to his house. His mother said he was not home. His father declined to speak and said he would pass the contact to a lawyer. Rosen used the case to warn parents. “If you get any indication — especially if you hear from federal law enforcement — that your son or daughter is being radicalized, to the point where federal law enforcement wants to come and give you that warning, those are warnings that ought to be heeded,” he said.