A Wakefield teenager is accused of shopping for $1,670 in reward playing cards to assist ISIS and the terrorist group’s fighters, allegedly sending the reward playing cards to an undercover FBI agent posing as an ISIS supporter.
Mateo Ventura, 18, who instructed the spy that he wished to struggle with ISIS, additionally reportedly tried to get $10 million from the FBI in change for details about an ISIS terror assault.
The FBI on Thursday arrested Ventura, and he was charged with knowingly concealing the supply of fabric assist or assets that he supposed to go to a international terrorist group.
While Ventura was nonetheless a juvenile, he gave 26 reward playing cards to the spy — donating $965 that was supposed to assist ISIS. Then after Ventura turned 18 years outdated, he gave 16 reward playing cards to the agent earlier this yr — donating $705 to assist ISIS.
“This seems really untraceable,” Ventura wrote to the agent about utilizing the reward playing cards to assist the terrorist group.
Ventura, who lives at residence together with his father in Wakefield, used a web-based encrypted messaging utility to speak with the agent. The utility, EMA, has develop into one in every of ISIS’s major communication instruments, and the app is utilized by its supporters to plan assaults.
As a juvenile in 2021, Ventura began speaking with the agent about his want to “make hijrah,” which refers to touring abroad to affix and struggle with ISIS.
Then the agent requested Ventura if he wished to provide “sadaqah,” a time period used to explain donations to ISIS.
Later that day, Ventura despatched the spy a redemption code for a Google reward card value $25.
The agent requested Ventura if he wished the redemption code offered on the darkish net for cash, and for that cash to be despatched “straight to mujahideen (Islamic fighters) for help in fight against kuffar (disbelievers).”
“Okay sell on darkweb,” Ventura wrote to the agent.
FBI particular agent Paul Lagno wrote within the felony grievance, “Ventura understood that providing material support to ISIS in the form of gift cards would be untraceable and would conceal that he was the source of the donations.”
Ventura is accused of buying a complete of $1,670 in reward playing cards, with the intention of the cash supporting the fear group.
Then in April, the 18-year-old allegedly referred to as the FBI Boston Operations Center a number of instances — asking to talk with an agent, saying he had details about upcoming terror assaults.
He instructed the FBI that the alleged assaults have been scheduled to happen across the time of Eid al-Fitr in Egypt.
Then he wrote an digital tip to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center, requesting $10 million and immunity “in exchange for information he believed would stop an ISIS attack,” the felony grievance reads.
The FBI instructed him that the knowledge was not particular, and subsequently not actionable. In a follow-up digital tip, Ventura instructed the FBI that he was “okay with the FBI’s decision, and requesting for the FBI to never speak to him again.”
The cost of knowingly concealing the supply of fabric assist or assets to a international terrorist group can result in a sentence of as much as 10 years in jail, as much as a lifetime of supervised launch, and a effective of as much as $250,000.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”