30-Year Slammer Sentence for Crypto Terror Funding!

Virginia Man's Dark Web Trail Leads to ISIS

Holy smokes! A dude from Springfield, Virginia just got slammed with over 30 years in the big house for funneling crypto to ISIS. Mohammed Azharuddin Chhipa, a 35-year-old mastermind, got hit with a 30-year-and-4-month sentence on May 7. Talk about a long time to think about your life choices!

This guy wasn't just playing around. Over three years, he sent a whopping $185,000 in cryptocurrency to those ISIS operatives, funding their crazy escape ops and combat gigs in Syria. And get this, he was slick with it, using crypto to keep his dirty deeds under wraps and dodge the feds.

Chhipa's world came crashing down after a jury nailed him in December 2024. Guilty on one count of conspiracy to support a terrorist org and four counts of actually doing it. The Department of Justice called him a major money mover, using social media to rake in cash, then converting it to crypto and sending it off to Turkey.

From there, the cash took a wild ride, smuggled into Syria to fuel ISIS fighters and help their women stuck in camps. Chhipa was tight with a British-born ISIS bigwig in Syria, known for plotting terror and jailbreaks. This guy was in deep!

But Chhipa didn't go down without a fight. He tried all sorts of tricks to stay hidden, from misspelled emails to fake names when buying plane tickets. When the heat got too much, he tried to bolt, hopping through Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, and Germany before getting nabbed in Egypt and dragged back to the U.S. by Interpol.

U.S. Attorney Erik S. Siebert didn't mince words: "Chhipa knowingly and persistently collected and provided a considerable amount of money to fund the violence of an organization bent on forcing their extremist ideology on others." Ouch, that's gotta sting!

This sentencing is just the latest in a string of U.S. crackdowns on crypto terror funding. The feds are on a mission to smash these digital money trails linked to ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Just last month, they seized over $200,000 in crypto tied to Hamas, part of a scheme that laundered over $1.5 million since October 2024.

The U.S. Treasury's been busy too, blacklisting eight crypto addresses used by the Houthis to buy weapons and dodge sanctions back in April. The message is clear: cutting off these financial lifelines is key to kneecapping these terror groups.