A man prosecutors describe as a senior Hamas military operative allegedly raised $1.7 million for the terrorist group by telling donors he was buying food for starving Gazans, then telling an undercover FBI officer the money went to "the Green" — slang for Hamas. He launched a new fundraising campaign on the same day Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel. He kept it open for five days.
The Scheme, Spelled Out
Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Thursday against Saleem Alzaq, a 45-year-old Gaza resident they allege has been a Hamas member since at least 2017. According to CBS News, prosecutors say Alzaq ran an international fundraising operation from January 2020 through December 2025, collecting money under the pretense of providing food and winter supplies to Palestinians in Gaza.
The campaigns raised more than $1.7 million total. At least $626,000 of that came from donors inside the United States. The indictment names co-conspirators in France who allegedly helped move the money, two brothers in Louisiana who allegedly kicked in about $105,000, and a Florida man who prosecutors say contributed nearly $50,000.
Alzaq faces four counts: conspiring to provide material support to Hamas, conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, conspiring to commit money laundering, and conspiring to defraud the United States. The first three each carry a maximum of 20 years in prison. He has not been arrested. Prosecutors say he has been in Gaza throughout the alleged crimes.
The Bread People
Here's where it gets specific, and specifically damning. According to the indictment, Alzaq did not just collect money and quietly pass it along. He built out a whole coded vocabulary for it. Prosecutors say he told donors to use words like "bread," "bakeries," "buy bread," and "give it to the bakeries" as stand-ins for Hamas transactions.
In January 2024, CBS News reports, a U.S.-based Hamas supporter messaged Alzaq asking about money sent to "the bread people." Alzaq allegedly replied that he had "learned the way" and could deliver "whatever you want." That is not a man who stumbled into this. That is a man who had worked out the system.
He also allegedly advised donors — directly, on social media — not to write "Free Palestine" or "long live Hamas" in the notes field when sending money to his PayPal accounts. Not because he opposed those sentiments. Because he did not want the accounts flagged and shut down. The man was running fraud hygiene tutorials for his donors.
The Undercover Operation
In November 2025, an undercover law enforcement officer posing as a New York-based Hamas supporter reached out to Alzaq on Snapchat. According to prosecutors, Alzaq told the officer he had ways to receive money in New York and offered to connect the officer with local contacts.
The following month, CBS News reports, Alzaq allegedly told the undercover officer that he worked with people who wanted to get money to "the Green" — which prosecutors identify as a reference to Hamas. He said he received money and passed it along, but that documentation would be hard to produce because Hamas members avoided using identification. He was explaining operational security to someone he thought was a fellow traveler. He was not being careful. He was being helpful.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement that investigators identified Alzaq as "a leader in Hamas' military arm responsible for planning and carrying out terrorist attacks." The NYPD's intelligence analysts, she said, built the case that traced more than $2 million being funneled to the group.
October 7th Was Also a Fundraising Day
This detail deserves its own section because it is genuinely hard to process. According to the indictment, Alzaq launched a new fundraising campaign on October 7, 2023 — the same day Hamas killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel in the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. The campaign claimed to raise money for Gazans injured that day. It stayed open until around October 12.
Alzaq has also allegedly posted Hamas propaganda on social media, including posts celebrating the October 7 attack, according to prosecutors. So to be clear about what prosecutors are alleging: a man who celebrated the massacre was simultaneously collecting money from American donors who believed they were feeding hungry families.
The gap between what donors thought they were funding and what they were actually funding is the whole story here. Whether those donors were deceived or complicit is something the Justice Department is still working through. The Louisiana brothers and the Florida man are named in the indictment. No charges against them have been announced publicly as of the indictment's unsealing.
What This Means for Online Giving
Prosecutors allege this operation ran for nearly six years, across multiple countries, using mainstream American payment platforms. PayPal. Snapchat. Standard donation campaign infrastructure. The kind of thing anyone with a credit card and a cause has used at some point.
That is not a coincidence. It is the point. Legitimate-looking humanitarian fundraising is one of the oldest methods of terrorist financing precisely because it is hard to distinguish from the real thing without sustained investigative work. The NYPD and federal prosecutors say this case took years of intelligence analysis and an undercover operation to build.
For ordinary donors, the lesson is grim: the platforms designed to make giving frictionless also make fraud easy. Alzaq allegedly knew this and used it. He gave specific instructions to donors on how to avoid triggering platform moderation. He was not hiding in the dark web. He was operating on the same apps your relatives use to send you birthday money.
The Dingo Take
Raising $626,000 from American donors for Hamas, using PayPal and the word "bread," is a fairly complete sentence.
What makes this case worth sitting with is not just the alleged crime. It is the infrastructure. Alzaq allegedly did not need shell companies or offshore accounts or any of the complicated financial plumbing that usually shows up in terrorism financing prosecutions. He needed a sympathetic cause, a compelling story about starving children, and a payment app. That's it. That's the whole operation. And it allegedly ran for five years, across the U.S. and France, while prosecutors built a case careful enough to hold up in a federal court.
The donors who sent money believing it would buy food for Gazan families deserve some acknowledgment here too, because the indictment does not tell us how many of them knew and how many were simply lied to. Some of them may have been true believers in the cause. Some of them may have been completely deceived by a man who knew exactly how to make atrocity look like charity. That distinction matters, legally and morally, and it is not settled yet. What is settled is this: a man allegedly celebrated the murder of 1,200 people and then opened a fundraiser the same afternoon. The bread people got their money. Now prosecutors are trying to make sure he answers for it.
Comments