The Justice Department seized approximately $560,000 in cryptocurrency bound for Hamas and took control of the terrorist group's fundraising websites, exposing thousands of individuals who tried to send money to its military wing.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro and Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg announced the court-authorized operation this week, marking one of the most concrete disruptions of Hamas's digital financing network since the group began experimenting with cryptocurrency fundraising around 2019. The FBI didn't just grab the money. It seized the servers and domains Hamas was using to solicit donations and recruit supporters, then kept the infrastructure running long enough to intercept incoming funds and catalog the people sending them.
The result: roughly $560,000 in cryptocurrency stripped from Hamas's Al Qassam Brigades, its military wing, and a trove of identifying information on thousands of individuals who allegedly attempted to funnel money to the designated terrorist organization through its online channels.
Court documents described how investigators first identified a group chat on an encrypted communications platform, the name of which has not been disclosed, where users claiming ties to Hamas directed supporters to a fundraising website. That site listed a rotating set of cryptocurrency wallet addresses, a tactic designed to make donations harder to track.
It didn't work. The FBI used multiple human sources on three separate occasions, March 25, June 25, and October 10, 2025, to identify, trace, and seize the cryptocurrency flowing through those wallets. Hamas had told potential donors the transactions would be untraceable, a claim the FBI's Cyber Division methodically dismantled over the course of seven months.
After taking control of the domains and servers, the FBI effectively turned Hamas's own fundraising apparatus into a collection tool. Donations kept arriving, and the bureau kept intercepting them.
The operation also swept up the identities of those on the other end of the transactions. Pirro, in a video posted on the social media platform X, put a sharp point on it:
"By seizing their servers and their domains, we were able to directly intercept money that was going to be used by the military wing of Hamas, the Al Qassam Brigade."
She added that investigators now hold the names of thousands of people who tried to send money to Hamas, information the DOJ said will feed directly into the FBI's ongoing counterterrorism work.
Fox Business reported Pirro's written statement in full, and it read less like a press release than a direct challenge to the group's operational leadership:
"A message to Hamas: We will stop your fundraising for terror. Your networks are not secure, your crypto is vulnerable, and we will not stop until your ability to wage war is defeated."
Eisenberg, the Justice Department's top national security official, framed the seizures in the context of Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the deadliest single-day assault on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.
"These seizures deprive Hamas of resources it relies on to recruit and radicalize individuals online and finance barbaric attacks like the one on October 7, 2023."
He went further, describing the strategy as a sustained campaign rather than a one-off enforcement action. "We will continue to tighten the vise on Hamas's capacity for terror by infiltrating its online networks, confiscating its cryptocurrency, and shutting down its websites," Eisenberg said.
The FBI's evolving capacity to pursue terrorist financing through digital currencies has become a growing priority under the current administration. The bureau's broader posture, including new international law enforcement partnerships forged by FBI Director Kash Patel, reflects a shift toward more aggressive counterterrorism and cyber operations.
The group's move into cryptocurrency was not spontaneous. Newsmax reported that Hamas began testing virtual currency fundraising around early 2019, using platforms like Telegram and direct online portals to solicit donations. The pitch to supporters was simple: give through crypto, and no one will ever know.
That promise collapsed under the weight of the FBI's investigation. The bureau's Cyber Division played a central role, with FBI Assistant Director Brett Leatherman stating that the agency would "continue to use its authorities to intercept illicit funds and prevent terrorist organizations from exploiting digital networks to finance their operations."
The specific domains seized included infrastructure tied to AlQassam.ps, identified as the main website of Hamas's military wing. The New York Post reported that the FBI traced donations through the online fundraising scheme by following the rotating cryptocurrency addresses back to their source wallets, a process that required sustained technical surveillance across multiple months.
The broader question of how federal agencies balance aggressive digital surveillance with civil liberties remains a live debate in Washington. Congressional disputes over the scope of FBI investigative authorities have intensified in recent years, with some Republicans pushing for stronger warrant protections even as counterterrorism officials argue they need broad tools to track threats like Hamas's cryptocurrency networks.
The DOJ's announcement did not mention any arrests connected to the operation. That silence raises its own set of questions. The FBI now holds identifying information on thousands of individuals who allegedly tried to send money to a designated terrorist organization. Whether those people are located inside the United States, abroad, or both has not been disclosed.
Providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization is a federal crime carrying penalties of up to 20 years in prison, or life, if the support results in death. The DOJ's statement that the donor information would be folded into "ongoing counterterrorism efforts" suggests the investigation is far from over.
The seized cryptocurrency's final disposition also remains unclear. Federal forfeiture proceedings typically follow court-authorized seizures of this kind, but no details on that process have been released. The specific types of cryptocurrency involved, whether Bitcoin, Ethereum, or another digital currency, were not identified in the government's public statements.
The FBI's willingness to take aggressive action on domestic soil against foreign terrorist financing networks stands in contrast to years of criticism that federal law enforcement was too slow to adapt to the digital fundraising tools terrorist groups had adopted. The current administration has signaled repeatedly that it intends to use every available tool, from device seizures in federal probes to cryptocurrency tracing, to pursue threats wherever the evidence leads.
Hamas told its donors their money couldn't be traced. The FBI traced it, seized it, and kept the names. That's the kind of counterterrorism work that speaks for itself.
