Federal agents arrested an 18-year-old Minnesota man after he bought an AK-47 for a planned Mall of America attack meant to kill dozens in support of ISIS.
FBI agents took Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud into custody in Richfield after he paid $600 for an AK-47 and 200 rounds of ammunition from an undercover employee posing as an ISIS contact, ending a long-running sting before the teenager could strike.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, Minnesota’s top federal prosecutor, announced the case Wednesday and said the bureau had stopped a terrorist attack plan aimed at the Mall of America. Mohamud, an American-born U.S. citizen of Somali descent, had been under investigation since December 2024 and was charged after the yearslong operation.
The Washington Examiner reported the FBI action and the prosecutor’s announcement that agents halted the plot tied to support for the terrorist group.
Investigators did not wait for a public scare. They watched Mohamud, ran the sting, and moved when he completed the weapons purchase.
The New York Post reported that he timed the attack for Oct. 24 during a Hmong arts celebration at the mall and that he settled on a domestic strike after deciding he could not afford travel to Somalia to join ISIS. In messages with a confidential informant, he affirmed an intent to kill non-Muslims.
Rosen described both the threat and the stop in plain terms.
"This was a radicalized young man who needed to be watched. [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."
That body-count range came from Mohamud’s own words, according to the prosecutor. The planned target was a crowded public mall, not a remote military site.
Fox News likewise reported that the FBI announced the thwarted Mall of America terror plot and the arrest of the suspected ISIS sympathizer in Minnesota. The through-line across the accounts is the same: a radicalized 18-year-old, a mall target, and a federal sting that ended in handcuffs rather than casualties.
Mohamud first drew FBI attention in December 2024. From that point forward, agents treated the case as a live threat and used an informant and an undercover role to test his intentions. When he paid for the rifle and ammunition, they had the hard evidence they needed and made the arrest in Richfield.
The charging announcement establishes support for ISIS as the stated motive and the Mall of America as the chosen site. It also establishes that the suspect is a U.S. citizen who radicalized young and looked for a mass-casualty opportunity at home when foreign travel fell through.
Specific statute names, docket numbers, and a full affidavit text were not laid out in the initial wave of reporting. No injuries, deaths, or mall closures were described, because the plot never reached the floor of the shopping center. Co-conspirators were not named in the material made public with the announcement.
Those gaps matter for later court filings. They do not blur the central fact pattern: a teenager pledged to a foreign terrorist brand, talked about killing dozens of non-Muslims, bought a rifle from someone he believed was an ISIS helper, and picked a date tied to a public cultural event.
Yearslong does not mean passive. The bureau kept eyes on Mohamud, fed the investigation through informant contact, and staffed an undercover purchase that captured both the weapon buy and the intent behind it. Rosen’s office then went public once the arrest and charges were in place.
That sequence is how domestic terror cases are supposed to end, before mourning begins. The suspect’s own range of “maybe 30 to 60” victims shows what agents believed they were racing against.
Mall of America is one of the country’s best-known public venues. A successful attack there would have been a national trauma, not a local crime story. The FBI’s intervention kept it in the charging documents instead of the emergency room.
Radicalization did not require a passport or a overseas training camp. An 18-year-old citizen, ISIS propaganda and contacts, a rifle purchase, and a crowded mall on a festival day were enough. Federal agents closed the window. Courts will now handle the rest. Vigilance still works when agencies treat jihadist intent as a real threat and run the case to the arrest.
