Oct. 7 Victims' Families Sue Binance Over $1B Terror Funding

Families of victims from the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court in Fargo, North Dakota, accusing the cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, of facilitating more than $1 billion in transfers to terrorist organizations linked to the assault.

The complaint, brought by 306 American plaintiffs including those killed, injured, or kidnapped in the attack and subsequent incidents, names Binance, Zhao, and senior executive Guangying Heina Chen as defendants. It alleges that the platform knowingly enabled money laundering for groups designated as terrorists by the United States, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to the filing, these transfers supported the October 7 attacks, which killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, as well as ongoing violence.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim Binance ignored warnings from its own compliance teams and designed its systems to evade oversight, allowing suspicious transactions to proceed without basic security checks. The 300-page complaint details specific accounts tied to militants, such...