US Justice Department says it seized $560,000 in cryptocurrency from Hamas-linked addresses

The US Department of Justice said it confiscated $560,000 in cryptocurrency tied to Hamas addresses, while also taking down websites and communications platforms used for fundraising and recruitment. For PSPs and crypto businesses, the operational point is simple: when law enforcement gets a chain of donor data, the compliance question stops being abstract very quickly.

1. The Justice Department did not specify which cryptocurrencies were seized. It said the action was part of an operation to disrupt terrorist financing, and that investigators obtained information on thousands of people who wanted to send money to Hamas.
2. According to the FBI, Hamas began testing cryptocurrency donations in early 2019. The group collected donations through its own Telegram channel and looked for other online crowdfunding methods, while representatives boasted that crypto could not be traced and posted instructions for making anonymous donations.
3. The FBI said a major breakthrough came last year, when agents found a network collecting cryptocurrency donations for Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades. Investigators learned from a confidential US source about a Telegram post asking users to transfer funds to an address linked to terrorists.
4. In a statement quoted by the FBI, the bureau said Hamas used cryptocurrency to raise funds and move that money outside the global financial system. It said the seizure would deprive the group of resources used for online recruitment and for financing attacks such as those carried out on October 7, 2023.
5. Also last year, families of hostages and victims of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel filed a class action lawsuit against Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. They accused Binance of providing cryptocurrency services to Hamas and said the exchange allowed the group to bypass sanctions.