‘SIGNIFICANT DENT’
U.S. seizes cryptocurrency it says was meant for terror groups
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday that it had seized millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency meant to fund terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State in what law enforcement officials called an unprecedented crackdown against terrorist fundraising on social media.
In addition to seizing funds, U.S. officials said they obtained court orders to seize 300 cryptocurrency accounts, four websites and four Facebook pages used for the alleged terrorist fundraising.
“Terrorist networks have adapted to technology, conducting complex financial transactions in the digital world, including through cryptocurrencies,” said
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
John Demers, head of the Justice Department’s national security division, said authorities had seized cryptocurrency worth about $2 million, which he called “a significant dent” that will make “a big difference in their operations.”
Law enforcement officials said they had also blacklisted several million dollars more of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency tied to the terrorists’ online fundraising.
The social media fundraising for terrorism was as profitable as it was public, officials said, because the people raising and donating money wrongly thought using cryptocurrency would keep them anonymous.
“They become less cautious because they think there is a cyber-enabled veneer that protects them,” one law enforcement official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. “They’re not really trying to hide what they’re doing; they are in fact very open.”
As a result of that overconfidence, officials said, a number of people in the United States are under investigation in connection with making donations to terrorist groups.
In one of the cases announced Thursday, officials said the military wing of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, tweeted its call for donations and told supporters that giving bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies would be untraceable and used for violent causes.
Federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI traced the funds back and ultimately seized 150 accounts tied to the al-Qassam fundraising effort.
The agents also got a court order to seize the al-Qassam websites and operate them covertly for weeks, allowing them to receive and redirect donations meant for the group while gathering information about their donors.
Another online fundraising network sought to help al-Qaida groups largely based in Syria, officials said. The organizations, according to the government’s court filing, laundered bitcoin and solicited donations using Telegram messaging channels and social media platforms.
In some cases, the appeal for donations was couched as charity work, the filing said.
In another case, authorities charge that Murat Cakar worked as a “facilitator” for the Islamic State and ran a coronavirus-related scam purporting to sell protective masks online. The FBI first became interested in Cakar years ago when a man in New York sent him money to support the Islamic State, authorities said.
A former staffer from The Ellen DeGeneres Show has alleged the atmosphere in the workplace was “like The Devil Wears Prada.”
The anonymous former camera assistant compared the working environment to the 2006 film, based on the novel of the same name, about a college grad who works for a domineering fashion magazine editor in New York. It suggests a tense environment with nervous staff walking on eggshells around a demanding boss — presumably the host.
The former staff member said: “I worked there for a little over a year. It’s kind of like The Devil Wears Prada.
Everyone is trying to make it to the (end of a) year.
“It’s just a badge of honour to have that and have it on your resume,” they told Australian radio show Stav, Abby & Matt.
Talking about their interactions with Ellen, they added: “I wasn’t even allowed in the same room as her. Most people are told, ‘When Ellen enters the room, you and your entire crew need to leave.’ Sometimes her bodyguards come forward first and you kind of see them and you know to leave and that’s it.”
David Cronenberg’s 1996 film about people who get turned on by car crashes has aged remarkably well since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, an event that prompted Britain’s Daily Mail to demand on its front page: “Ban This Car Crash Sex Film.”
You wouldn’t want to take kids, easily upset elders or car lovers to the recently restored re-release, but the sex scenes, while intense, feel less shocking in this century than they did in the last. Like the vehicles in the film, the sex is vintage.
James Spader plays film director James Ballard (also the name of the British author on whose novel the film is based). He and wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) have an open relationship; early scenes show each having sex with someone else, then meeting to discuss the details.
But after a bad car crash James develops a fixation on the other survivor (Holly Hunter) and on car crashes in general. They find themselves drawn into the orbit of Vaughan (Elias Koteas), who stages famous crashes (think James Dean) with stunt drivers.
The performances are weirdly flat — clearly an artistic choice by the director, though it did feed into the ’90s cliché of Canadian cinema being as icy cold as a Winnipeg winter. But Spader is perfectly
cast as the perverted filmmaker — contemporary audiences would still have fairly fresh memories of him in 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, though he was still a few years away from 2002’s Secretary.
And Koteas is wonderfully creepy — there’s a scene where he’s standing behind Spader and can’t stop himself from sniffing the man’s leather jacket. And another in a car wash, about which I can only say: It ain’t touchless.
Crash famously won a special jury prize at Cannes for “for originality, for daring and for audacity,” an award that has not been bestowed before or since in the festival’s 73-year history, and probably never will. But the divisive response at the festival may have been the mark of a film released ahead of its time. The year after it came out, Ian McEwan published Enduring Love, another tale of accident-induced obsession that was made into a movie in 2004.
That was also the year that Paul Haggis released the Oscar-winning, confusingly titled Crash, a story of race and redemption that hasn’t aged nearly as well. Get them confused at your peril!
This is the only one featuring actual bootleg marijuana (as in, it’s hidden in someone’s bootleg), and the ultra-Cronenbergian line from Koteas’s character: “We are all intimately involved in the reshaping of the human body by modern technology.”
Oh, and this weird bit of dialogue between Hunter and Spader. She asks from the front seat: “Have you come?” He in the back replies calmly: “I’m all right.” So there’s a laugh or two to be had, as well.