Bitcoin Forum

A woman, Zoobia Shahnaz of Long Island was sentenced to jail for 13 years for laundering money to fund ISIS using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Department of Justice stated that she was working to fund ISIS through crypto payments for over $150,000 and is working to move to Syria to be part of ISIS.

In order for her to fund money, Shahnaz defrauded banks and secured loans and credit cards under false pretenses to buy cryptocurrency. Back in July 2017, she was on her way to travel to Syria but officials prevented her from boarding her flight in New York City. She was then arrested in 2017.

She was pleaded guilty in 2018 however because of her motives of volunteering and medical aid for refugees in Syria via Syrian American Medical Society she was sentenced to 13 years in prison. If she doesn't have any history or motives of any charitable works she could have been sentenced up to 110 years in prison.

The sentencing memorandum continued to highlight Shahnaz’s history of charitable work:



Source:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-woman-funding-isis-with-bitcoin-gets-13-year-jail-sentence

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Although she was funding ISIS, due to her charitable work, her defense worked that her sentenced years decreased. However, it is another reason for the authorities to be strict with cryptocurrency as it is their way to fund and support ISIS. If this is their way to get funded, for sure other terrorist groups we're also going the same to get funds without getting tracked by the government.

It's not surprising to us that cryptocurrency is getting involved in this kind of transactions but this could only bring fear and doubt to the public if they keep on hearing negative news related to cryptocurrency. Maybe it's one of the major reasons why the government is trying to seize bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies because it can be used for illegal transactions like this. What can you say about it?

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PS: I'm not posting this to promote the site, I just want to share the news with everyone. Thank you!

This reminds me of the time serial crypto scammer Bryce Wiener sent a BTC tip to ISIS through a tipping service, in 2015:

https://www.coindesk.com/changetip-user-banned-isis

Even though he was banned from using the service, he was never sentenced to jail or anything. 


It means you're a white man with a vanilla-ass name, Bryce.  :D

As far as I know this is not the next one though, I have seen news like this back in 2017 that's why crypto got a bad reputation back then. However, since the improvement of tracking addresses with companies like CipherTrace and Chainalysis or Elliptic its not a matter of time before this criminals can be followed and put under the law.

Well nothing has changed since 2017. There are people who are supporting terrorism using cryptocurrencies. Eventually they will be caught and put behind bars but, in the meantime Bitcoin will get a bad reputation.

All that money that she had sent has now been flushed to the drain after the collapse of ISIS.

Crypto or bitcoin is just the tool here. No bank would give you money for buying crypto without a collateral. She has or receiving the funding through different mediums or has a strategy to fool the banks to give her money. The initial funding is through fiat. Bitcoin has just eased the inter country money transfer. Which on other side should also be converted to fiat to be useful for most jobs.

Man, this is just something. How the hell can anyone donate money to a terrorist organization that tortures and executes people and make videos of it for the Internet, and this donation is supposed to prove how libertarian that person is? Dude totally deserves a year or two of jail time, really strange how this story was so public and yet law enforcement didn't pick it.

It's so sad that Bitcoin and other crypto were used to this kind of crime and various purposes related to Money laundering dirty money. Bitcoin is really prone to these kinds of crimes especially supporting terrorism. Good thing that nowadays they were get caught about their fraudulent activities and this is unsurprising that terrorists and criminals will probably use digital currencies for illicit transitions in the easiest way for their own benefits.

Thank you for sharing and now much better the girl was sentenced for 13 years in jail. Hopefully, our authorities stay vigilant regarding these cases.

Jesus, I can't believe ISIS has or had a tipping service, especially since you can be sure authorities from all over the world would be monitoring it.

I wasn't aware of this story, so thanks to OP for posting it--but these are the types of stories that give bitcoin and other cryptos a black eye as far as the general masses are concerned, i.e., the masses who don't think about things critically and wouldn't conclude that the funding could have been done with fiat or any other thing that has value. 

I'm kind of surprised her prison sentence was that light (though I'm sure it doesn't feel that way for her), but women usually don't get punished as severely in the legal system as men do. 

As said, crypto is just a tool. And with other correct tools bitcoin can be (and is!) tracked, hence she was caught.
I don't know why authorities should be more strict with crypto than with cash, for example. They should actually just treat crypto in the same way as money and the other means of payment.

These are some of the reasons why the government of nations don't want to legalize the use of cryptocurrencies. The level of privacy is high, though good bad people would take advantage of this and use it for their obscene activities. I am glad this woman has been brought under the law to serve as a warning to others who might be doing this same thing with cryptocurrencies.

I am just curious, how the government and police track this woman? I believe that the Bitcoin transaction can be track at the blockchain explorer, but it cannot be linked to people unless he posted his/her bitcoin address then, how does someone can verify the address if it belongs to someone. If that really happens then, I think bitcoin is not private and not for anonymity? If you use bitcoin you will be tracked? I hope someone can answer my question.

Probably the wallet address of the isis were public posted on their related websites/socmed accounts which were monitored by the government assigned organizations, and say the women are using an exchange to send the support to the isis' address, and that's why they get her info, not so sure tho.
This means that the authorities accessed her device and search history.

RAND wrote a very long essay about how terrorists are using cryptocurrencies, which is available for free at https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3026/RAND_RR3026.pdf (https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3026/RAND_RR3026.pdf). The summary is it's hard for them to do anything with the bitcoin they receive because they can hardly buy anything with the crypto they receive without converting it to paper money.

And that's all I'm going to delve in this subject.

Also had the same thing on my mind. I feel like the punishment was kinda light for funding a terrorist group who can kill group of people and is an enemy of the government. And I'm wondering if her defense was enough for a light punishment. I ain't wanting the worst for her but just because she's doing charity work, she was able to decreased her sentenced years. What if after 13 years, she will continue to fund ISIS again?


Since decentralized crypto can't be controlled by the government, it's much harder for them to monitor it than the cash that they're the one providing the community. And with crypto transactions it's also harder to track than paper money. And it won't be that suspicious if you transfer big amount of money with crypto unlike cash.

There's no doubt people could have think of ways to fund terrorists with bitcoin, though, it's quite sad to know that despite of all the services bitcoin could provide, people are using it in ways like OP said. This should be considered in order to strengthen the regulation of a country especially in monitoring transactions made by terrorists and criminals. I see it's quite contradicting that we want to utilize the feature of bitcoin to provide extreme anonymity for everyone however, we want bitcoin to have regulation. The idea here is to regulate cryptocurrency as a whole and to have strong measure especially in keeping track of the transactions made by these kind of people and not the entire population that uses crypto at all.

They will exchange it definitely but you should know that there are a lot of mixing sites by which they can easily break the link of their coin. Also, samurai wallet and wasabi wallet is there to mix BTC. That's how they exchange. It is nothing surprise. Hackers are also doing the same. It is also possible that they may exchange Bitcoin for Monero and later they can easily get fiat. No clue is there to suspect their coins.

Does it matter that she does it using bitcoin? I don't think we should pay attention to this fact.

OP, the honey-badger don't care. Bitcoin will continue to suck more fiat into its system for as long as the Central Bankers continue to print more fiat. It's inevitable.

Buy the dip, and? 8)

It's not such a big surprise.
We all know that Bitcoin is also used for illegal and criminal activities too, from the very begininig, so why would terorrism be an exception. It.puts bad light on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general but unfortunately everything that is good could be misused for bad activities too. But fiat money is misued too so this case shouldn't be a reason why we should put Bitcoin on a black list.

god bless she was found And I hope this vase is well investigated

They don't have to control crypto. They have to properly regulate the businesses that handle crypto.
Of course, it would not be a perfect measure, but money control is also far from perfect.

Being strict on crypto - especially on individuals - will most probably solve nothing and also may restrict human rights. Plus, it's not an easy task, especially as crypto is not physical.

This types of stories are just rubbing salt to the wound of this infamous problem of cryptocurrency. This government seizures for cryptocurrency control is a likely solution to this growing problem of money laundering using cryptocurrency.

So basically she used fiat money to fund ISIS.Buying cryptocurrencies was only to provide some kind of anonymity to the financial operation,which eventually failed.
This proves that banks are easy to get 'defrauded' and KYC policies and ID verification are useless,because criminals can use fake identities in order to get loans and credit cards.
By the way,is ISIS still active?I thought that ISIS was destroyed by the Syrian and Turkish armies.

This just goes to show how banks indirectly fund terrorism. With the amount of KYC details needed to be submitted before one can make transactions with the bank, it's alarming how many people still can get away with fraudulent activities and bask under the warmth of freedom. Cryptocurrency was only used as a vehicle to deliver the funds, but the main source of the funds are from loans on the banks. Without the latter, the former can't even be utilized, therefore no funds would have reached the terrorists. Anyway, good thing she was caught early in the game.