The US Department of Justice has spent years chasing terrorist cash through the blockchain, and the most recent chapter makes clear that Hamas’s crypto fundraising operation is considerably extra persistent than the group publicly admitted.
On September 1, 2026, the DOJ and FBI introduced a coordinated sequence of actions that seized greater than $560,000 in digital belongings tied to Hamas and its navy wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, whereas additionally taking down digital domains and servers the group used to gather donations.
What the seizures really regarded like
The primary main transfer got here in March 2025, when investigators seized roughly $201,400 linked to a community of rotating pockets addresses. These wallets had collectively moved over $1.5 million since late 2024, a way designed to obscure the cash path by biking funds through a fast sequence of accounts earlier than cashing out.
The first token concerned throughout a number of circumstances was USDT, the stablecoin issued by Tether. The FBI’s Albuquerque Area Workplace led the blockchain evaluation work, tracing USDT flows again to Hamas-linked accounts regardless of the rotation technique.
In July 2025, the DOJ filed a civil forfeiture grievance focusing on roughly $2 million in digital foreign money related to a Gaza-based enterprise known as Purchase Money Cash and Cash Switch Firm, together with its proprietor, Ahmed M.M. Alaqad. Each had already acquired sanctions from the US Treasury. One account tied to Purchase Money reportedly acquired not less than $4 million directed towards Hamas operations, making the $2 million forfeiture goal a partial restoration from a a lot bigger circulate.
Past the cash, the DOJ additionally seized management of web infrastructure, together with fundraising domains and servers.
Hamas stated it stopped. It didn’t.
In 2023, Hamas publicly introduced it was halting crypto fundraising. That announcement got here below strain from exchanges and blockchain analytics companies that had grown extra aggressive about flagging Hamas-linked addresses.
The DOJ’s operations inform a special story. The group continued soliciting donations through encrypted platforms effectively after that public assertion.
The DOJ has maintained a sustained marketing campaign towards Hamas’s digital fundraising networks since not less than 2020. Corporations like Chainalysis and TRM Labs have constructed instruments that may cluster addresses by habits, determine trade deposit accounts, and map transaction graphs throughout hundreds of hops. The FBI’s skill to attach rotating wallets, every used briefly, to a single Hamas-affiliated operation is a direct product of that analytical functionality.
What this implies for crypto compliance
Exchanges and pockets suppliers that deal with USDT at scale ought to anticipate elevated scrutiny on transactions that exhibit rotation patterns or originate from jurisdictions below Treasury sanctions. The Purchase Money case is instructive: a sanctioned cash switch enterprise processed not less than $4 million in Hamas-directed funds through identifiable blockchain addresses, and that paper path survived lengthy sufficient to assist a federal forfeiture grievance.
For stablecoin issuers particularly, the repeated look of USDT in these circumstances will proceed to generate questions on issuer-level freezing capabilities. Tether has frozen addresses linked to illicit exercise in prior circumstances when offered with regulation enforcement requests.
