Binance Accused of Facilitating $1 Billion in Terror Transactions Ahead of Oct 7 Massacre
Over 300 survivors, families accuse crypto giant of aiding Hamas.
More than 300 survivors and relatives of victims of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel filed a devastating federal lawsuit against Binance Holdings Ltd, its founder Changpeng Zhao, and senior executive Guangying Chen, alleging the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange knowingly processed over $1 billion in transactions for Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the years leading up to the deadliest terrorist attack in Israeli history.
The 284-page complaint, lodged Monday in North Dakota federal court under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, claims Binance deliberately structured itself as a safe haven for terrorist financing by evading anti-money laundering controls, ignoring red flags on accounts controlled by designated terrorist organisations, and failing to file thousands of mandatory suspicious activity reports — conduct that allegedly continued even after the exchange’s 2023 guilty plea to criminal violations.
Plaintiffs, including families of murdered Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, slain Nova festival attendee Danielle Waldman, and fallen IDF soldiers Itay Chen and Moshe Leiter, assert that Binance’s “intentional refusal” to implement basic compliance measures directly enabled Hamas to accumulate and move funds that financed weapons, training, and the brutal assault that killed 1,200 people and abducted 250 hostages.
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The lawsuit details previously undisclosed digital wallets and transaction chains allegedly linking Binance accounts to Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades and Hezbollah’s gold-smuggling networks, including one case where a 26-year-old Venezuelan woman allegedly received $177 million in cryptocurrency as a front for Hezbollah, later withdrawing $43 million in cash to support Iran-backed militias.
This marks the fourth major US civil action accusing Binance of aiding Hamas, but the North Dakota filing surpasses prior complaints in forensic detail and comes just weeks after President Trump pardoned Zhao following his four-month prison term. Binance has yet to respond, while plaintiffs’ attorney Lee Wolosky declared that any company choosing profit over counter-terrorism obligations “must and will be held accountable” under American law.
