Reda Mazen Rida Sabassi, 38, of San Diego, was arrested on fives charges for allegedly transferring $116,000 to a Hamas member in Turkey and trying to convert $382,000 into cryptocurrency to deliver to people connected to the terror group, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday.
Sabassi faces charges of terrorism, sanctions-evasion, wire fraud, money laundering and false statement, and up to 85 years in prison, the department said.
The United States has designated Hamas as a terror organization since 1997.
The Justice Department alleges that all in all, Sabassi used online, crowd-sourced charity drives to raise about $600,000 ostensibly for humanitarian aid in Gaza but in fact funneled money to Hamas-related groups and used some of the monies for his personal expenses, including rent and credit card payments.
According to the complaint, Sabassi promoted Hamas online openly, created and shared an hour-long compilation video of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel and maintained close contact with Gaza Now, a Hamas-linked fundraising organization sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.
“The defendant exploited the barbaric acts of terror perpetrated on Oct. 7, 2023, to attract donors to his fraudulent ‘humanitarian’ causes,” stated John Eisenberg, assistant U.S. attorney general for national security. “He allegedly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through this scheme, which he then funneled to Hamas to help finance that group’s terror and violence and to line his own pockets.”
According to court filings, Sabassi and a co-conspirator discussed disguising fundraising efforts behind charitable branding and joked about naming a campaign after Hamas’s military wing before settling on the name of Sabassi’s nonprofit, Ikram.
