FBI thwarts ‘radicalized young man’ after undercover sting operation where he bought an assault rifle to attack the Mall of America
Source: Fortune ·
The 18-year-old Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud had been investigated for nearly two years before he paid an undercover FBI employee $600 for a rifle.
From the source
FBI agents thwarted a terror attack by a teenager on the Mall of America after supplying him with an assault rifle following months of text messages, authorities said Wednesday. The 18-year-old had been under investigation for nearly two years, trading messages with a confidential informant, before agents sold him the rifle and ammunition and arrested him on the spot, they said. “This was a radicalized young man who needed to be watched,” U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said as he praised the FBI investigation. 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.” Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, 18, was arrested Tuesday in a public park in Richfield, several miles northwest of the Mall of America, after he paid $600 to an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of ISIS for an AK-47 and 200 rounds of ammunition, according to the criminal complaint. Mohamud appeared in a yellow jail uniform for…