US federal investigators have charged two brothers in Louisiana with fundraising for Hamas, according to court documents released Tuesday, in the latest in a series of cases alleging financial support for the terrorist group in the United States.
Abdel Adhami and Omar Adhami were charged with material support of a terrorist organization in federal court in Louisiana.
Court records indicate that Abdel Adhami coordinated Hamas fundraising with an individual named Saleem Alzaq. The FBI said it believed Alzaq was based in Gaza and had been posting Hamas propaganda on social media since at least 2021.
Adhami and Alzaq coordinated the collection and distribution of funds to support Hamas on Snapchat, investigators said.
Adhami began soliciting funds on Instagram the week after the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023, asking his followers to use a Western Union account to “donate to our afflicted brothers in Gaza.” He also appears to have solicited funds from acquaintances.
The complaint said the network also funneled funds through a purported charity in France. The name of the charity has been redacted.
Adhami and Alzaq used passwords to conceal their activity. The messages included in the criminal complaint both showed repeated references to “bread” or “bread people” and asked others to use those terms.
A Hamas fundraising complaint filed in the United States last week said the word “bread” had been used as a code word for Hamas.
While discussing “bread” in 2024, Alzaq told Adhami: “They are present at al-Shifa Hospital,” a medical center in Gaza that had housed Hamas terrorists, according to IDF documents.
“By God, every time I see one of the bread sellers doing something, I wish I was there with him,” Adhami said several weeks later. “I ask God Almighty to be among those who wage jihad with their money.”
“He who carries out jihad with money is also considered a jihadist,” he said in another message.
Adhami explained to his brother how to send money abroad, telling him: “The Prophet said: ‘He who equips a fighter is as if he himself had taken part in the fight.’ »
“When you want to send something, you tell him: ‘This amount for bread’, and he will understand. Don’t mention anything by name on WhatsApp and use the word ‘bread’ instead,” he said.
Adhami used PayPal to send more than $83,000 overseas to three recipients. The locations of two of the recipients were redacted, while the third was in Gaza. His brother allegedly sent more than $6,000 to Alzaq and his associates.
Alzaq also contacted an undercover NYPD officer in November 2025 to ask for donations to Gaza. Alzaq told the agent he had “friends” in New York, Ohio and “all over the United States.”
He suggested that the agent send funds to other associates in the United States and that the money be transferred “account to account”, apparently to obscure its provenance, before being sent to Gaza via PayPal.
“Let me see my friends in New York, and they are all from Palestine,” Alzaq said. “They are Americans, all of them. They are young people and they send me all the time. They are never up to par with us, they finance us.”
The case appears linked to an investigation announced in Florida last month, which accuses Raed Yousef, 56, of transferring tens of thousands of dollars to Hamas, misleading US authorities and committing financial crimes.
The case against Yousef says he had a co-conspirator in the Eastern District of Louisiana, where the Adhamis were charged, and another co-conspirator in a charity group in France, as in the Adhami case.
That case indicated that one of the Louisiana conspirators recruited Yousef to donate to Hamas and asked him to also use the code word “bread.”
The cases are the latest in at least seven U.S. federal investigations into allegations of fundraising for terrorism in Gaza over the past year.
In each of the investigations, the defendants are accused of using false humanitarian initiatives to finance terrorists based in Gaza.
These projects would all be international efforts using crowdfunding platforms, encrypted messages, social media and cryptocurrencies.
The investigations appear similar to the case against the Holy Land Foundation, an alleged charity that paid more than $12 million to Hamas in the 1990s and early 2000s. The so-called Holy Land Five, who were imprisoned, remain popular figures in the anti-Zionist movement.
Yousef and at least one other defendant, Reda Mazen Rida Sabassi, had made references to the Holy Land Foundation, according to court filings.
A search of Sabassi’s electronic devices showed that he had searched for information about the Holy Land Foundation online.
During a search of Yousef’s home, investigators found written documents about the Holy Land Foundation.
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