Communications of the ACM
U.S. Seizes Bitcoin Said to Be Used to Finance Terrorist Groups
The U.S. government seized about $2 million in cryptocurrency from accounts that had sent or received funds in alleged financing schemes for three foreign terrorist organizations.
Credit: Mohammed Saber/EPA/Shutterstock
The United States government said on Thursday that it seized about $2 million in Bitcoin and other types of cryptocurrency from accounts that had sent or received funds in alleged financing schemes for three foreign terrorist organizations: Al Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas's paramilitary arm, the Al Qassam Brigades.
Law enforcement officials said they had obtained court orders to seize about 300 cryptocurrency wallets held by banklike institutions. They also blacklisted privately held accounts containing several million additional dollars of virtual currency, which will make it more difficult for the people holding those funds to use financial institutions to cash them out.
The multiagency effort — several investigations were bundled together for a joint announcement — were the first significant civil forfeiture actions to seize cryptocurrency as part of counterterrorism financing investigations, said John Demers, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's National Security Division.
"Today's actions deprive Hamas, Al Qaeda and ISIS of millions of dollars they solicited to buy weapons and train terrorists," Mr. Demers said in a call with reporters. "By raising cryptocurrency on social media, these terrorists tried to bring terrorist financing into the current age. But these actions show that law enforcement remains a step ahead of them."
From The New York Times
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