{"id":363210,"date":"2026-10-02T21:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T21:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/363210\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T21:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T21:48:11","slug":"leader-of-1-7m-hamas-fundraising-scheme-bragged-about-friends-in-ny-feds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/363210\/","title":{"rendered":"Leader of $1.7M Hamas fundraising scheme bragged about ‘friends’ in NY: feds"},"content":{"rendered":"

An alleged Hamas member who purportedly raised nearly $2 million for the terror group<\/a> under the guise of humanitarian aid for ailing kids in Gaza bragged about his \u201cfriends\u201d in New York, new court papers claim.<\/p>\n

Saleem Alzaq, who works in Hamas\u2019 \u201cmedia office,\u201d boasted that he had \u201cso many\u201d friends in the Big Apple in a 2025 exchange with an undercover NYPD agent over Snapchat, federal prosecutors alleged.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy friends are in New York, so many of them; they are in New York and in the state of Ohio and all over the United States,\u201d Alzaq allegedly told the officer, who had asked how he could contribute.<\/p>\n

\"HeadshotSaleem Alzaq, believed to be in Gaza and still at large, is the alleged ringleader of the scheme. Manhattan US Attorney’s Office<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me see my friends in New York, and they are all from Palestine, from the West Bank and from Jerusalem, and they are American, all of them; they are young people and they send me all the time,\u201d he said, according to the court docs.<\/p>\n

The 45-year-old alleged Hamas mouthpiece, who is believed to still be at-large in Gaza, was indicted on Thursday in Manhattan federal court on charges of funneling $1.7 million to Hamas in \u201cdonations\u201d he claimed would be earmarked for humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n

Court papers do not reveal what Hamas did with the money, or if the cash was used in any terror plots.<\/p>\n

Alzaq\u2019s alleged chat with an NYPD undercover using the name \u201cHussain\u201d was revealed in a separate but related federal complaint unsealed in Louisiana court earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Abdel Adhami and his sibling Omar Adhami were arrested in the Pelican State for allegedly funneling cash to Alzaq. Abdel allegedly funneled more than $83,000 to Hamas from 2023 to 2026 while his brother is accused of sending $6,000.<\/p>\n

A Florida man, Raed Yousef, was separately charged with funneling nearly $50,000 to Hamas, while three more of Alzaq\u2019s alleged associates \u2014 Faouzi Barika, Amel Oualid and Nordine Barika, were arrested in France by the French General Directorate for Internal Security, according to US officials. <\/p>\n

No one based in New York has been charged in the case to date.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis office and our law enforcement partners will root out and prosecute those who finance Hamas, no matter where they are located,\u201d said Manhattan US Attorney Jamie McDonald in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"HamasThe purported fundraising plot raised nearly $2 million for Hamas, US officials say. Middle East Images\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Adhami brothers allegedly used code words to avoid detection including the term \u201cbread\u201d when referring to Hamas fighters and funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the message I wanted to deliver to the person who donated the bread,\u201d Alzaq said to Adbel via Snapchat in January 2024, the court documents state.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them received the bread, thanks be to god,\u201d Alzaq allegedly continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alzaq, who frequently posted pro-Hamas content on his social media, also allegedly instructed his followers not to write \u201cFree Palestine\u201d or \u201cLong Live Hamas\u201d on their donations so that his PayPal account was not canceled, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Manhattan federal prosecutors claimed in the indictment that the slogan \u201cFree Palestine\u201d was a reference to \u201cHamas\u2019 explicit goal of destroying the state of Israel and establishing an Arab-Muslim state in its place under Sharia law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawyers listed as repping the Adhami brothers did not immediately respond Friday to requests for comment. The Post was unable to immediately verify which attorneys, if any, were representing the other members of the alleged scheme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An alleged Hamas member who purportedly raised nearly $2 million for the terror group under the guise of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[59,61,277,57,9,24,55,54,56,58],"class_list":["post-363210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-hamas","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-manhattan-federal-court","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}