US DOJ says it seized Hamas crypto meant to finance terrorism

US DOJ says it seized Hamas crypto meant to finance terrorism

The US Department of Justice (doj) has seized more than $ 200,000 of the cryptocurrency aimed at benefiting from the Hamas armed group, which said in a statement On March 27.

The cryptocurrency has been tracked with a total value of 201,400 dollars for the donation collection addresses that are controlled by Hamas and used to wash more than $ 1.5 million in digital assets since October 2024.

Washing occurred through a series of “exchange of virtual currency and transactions by benefiting from suspected financiers and brokers without a prescription,” said the Ministry of Justice. Money is currently being held in a mixture of at least 17 wallets.

A written certificate to seize the cryptocurrency associated with Hamas. source: We have the Ministry of Justice

In January 2024, the US Treasury Office to control foreign assets, along with the opposite organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia, announced sanctions against networks and facilitators of enthusiastic encryption transactions. These sanctions were built on US Treasury sanctions from October 2023.

In January 2024, three families of Hamas's attack against Israel filed a lawsuit against Bennes and its former CEO, Changing Zhao, claiming that the stock exchange had submitted “great assistance” to the terrorists. In oral arguments, the lawyer who represents Binance claimed that the exchange “has no special relationship (with) Hamas (…).”

Binance faced auditing from the United States government due to alleged shortcomings in anti -money laundering controls. The stock exchange settled with the Ministry of Justice for $ 4.3 billion in November 2023.

More organization is required?

According to To the December 2024 report issued by the Congress Research Service, he claimed that Hamas had requested the donations of coded currency since at least 2019, although the “scale and effectiveness of these efforts was not clear.

The terrorist organizations that use Crypto to collect donations have increased the US attention, as some officials wonder whether the industry needs more supervision or regulations to stop this behavior.

According to the 2023 chainalysis report, terrorism financing Accounts For a very small amount of encryption, illegal groups are committed to using FIAT traditional methods to finance operations.

magazine: Terrorism and the Israel war have been armed to destroy encryption

cryptoDOJFinanceHamasmeantSeizedTerrorism