Two Louisiana brothers are facing terrorism charges for their alleged role in a twisted scheme to fund Hamas under the guise of Gaza humanitarian aid.
Page F3From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 2 October 2026
Feds stop second Hamas fundraising scheme this year, this one three times the size of the last.
As it ran on the front
The indictment in Louisiana runs to $1.7 million, and it says upfront what the money was supposed to be: humanitarian aid for Gaza. Two Louisiana brothers collected it, some of it from donors in the United States, according to federal prosecutors. That is the filing: humanitarian aid in, Hamas out.
Run that number against the month before. On September 2, federal agents seized a little over $560,000 in cryptocurrency the New York Post described as tied to an ongoing Hamas scheme built to finance operations and recruit supporters. A month later the second filing lands, and it is roughly three times the size of the first. If the September seizure stopped anything, it stopped $560,000 worth. By October the next scheme had already collected more than that before anyone filed charges.…
…(cont) What connects the two filings is not geography. The indictment does not say the $1.7 million crossed state lines, or which city it moved through, or whether it moved through one at all. What connects them is the vocabulary. The September seizure is described as part of an ongoing scheme. The October indictment describes a scheme disguised as aid. Same noun, two separate balance sheets, one calendar year, a month apart.
The Post credits the NYPD with helping expose the October scheme. The indictment itself does not say what the department contributed, in dollars or in evidence, only that help was given. That is a column with no number filled in yet. Put it next to the $1.7 million and the $560,000 and the ledger has three entries: one large, one smaller, and one the record has not priced.
None of this needs decoration. The arithmetic in the filings does the work on its own: a $560,000 seizure in September did not keep a $1.7 million operation from running by October. Two busts, a month apart, the same year, the same cover story for money whose route the indictment has not yet specified. The paperwork says disguise. It does not yet say destination.
“They want you staring at the word "disguised" so you don't look at the word "month" — a $560,000 seizure didn't stop a thing, it just set the price for the next scheme at three times that. Call it enforcement if it helps you sleep, but the money's still finding a route nobody in the filing has named. Either the government doesn't know where it went, or it does and isn't saying, and those are the only two options on the table.”
“This is the system working exactly as designed — two busts this year, money seized, a network disrupted, that's what the receipts show. Sure, the second scheme was three times the size of what we caught the first time, but that just proves — okay, that proves we're catching the small ones while the operation scales up around us. I didn't mean to put it that way.”
The receipts
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
$1.7 million raised in scheme for Hamas, including from U.S. donors, feds saySaleem Alzaq, a 45-year-old Gaza man who prosecutors allege is a longtime Hamas member, was charged with helping operate the fundraising campaign claiming to provide humanitarian aid, according to an indictment.
· DOJ seizes over $560,000 in Hamas-linked cryptocurrency from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.