Police tie Hamas to cryptocurrency theft from Indian businessman

The Investigation and Strategic Operations Division (IFSO) of Delhi Police has identified a link between the breach of a private cryptocurrency wallet and the Hamas militant group. Times of India reports.

According to the agency’s report, in 2019 Indian businessman Pashim Vihaar lost access to his wallet containing holdings in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash.

According to investigators, the militants laundered the cryptocurrency through various addresses. The coins subsequently ended up in Hamas’s military wing. The damage amount stands at $536,000 at present.

Subsequently, data from several Hamas-linked wallets appeared in the darknet.

“One of the addresses belonged to Mohammed Nasiru Ibrahim Abdulla. Another wallet to which the cryptocurrencies were transferred belonged to Ahmed Safi from the Palestinian city of Ramallah,” the IFSO report states.

Some of the coins ended up on a British gambling site and a site hosting child pornography.

The Hamas faction began using cryptocurrencies to finance its activities since 2019 in order to bypass international sanctions.

Earlier in July 2021, Israeli authorities issued an arrest warrant for arrest of 84 Hamas Bitcoin addresses.

According to the Institute for International Policy on Counterterrorism, a total of 3,370 BTC (~$29 million at the time) was received by one Hamas wallet between October 2015 and July 2019.

Whitestream analysts found that the group used several Bitcoin addresses to collect donations, one of which was hosted on Coinbase.

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