Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (pictured in 2022) is among defendants named in a federal lawsuit filed on Monday and accusing them of providing financial services that helped Hamas carry out the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed or injured 306 U.S. citizens in Israel. File Photo by Miguel A. Lopes/EPA
Nov. 25 (UPI) — The families of hundreds of U.S. citizens killed or injured by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, accuse cryptocurrency exchange Binance of supporting terrorism.
The families of 306 U.S. citizens harmed or killed during the attack filed a 272-page federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of North Dakota on Monday.
They say Malta-based Binance marketed its services to “terrorist organizations, narcotics traffickers and tax evaders” by emphasizing that Binance is “beyond the reach of any single country’s laws or regulations,” the lawsuit says, as reported by The New York Times.
The plaintiff families accused Binance of conducting transactions that totaled more than $1 billion on behalf of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
Binance officials handled the transactions despite being warned of potential illegality by its compliance vendors and did not use common security checks, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs also claim Binance willfully handled at least $50 million in transactions for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israeli civilians that killed 1,200 and kidnapped 254 others.
The lawsuit was filed a month after President Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao after he earlier pleaded guilty to money laundering charges, according to CNBC.
Zhao is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, along with Guangying Chen and Binance Holdings Ltd., who are accused of intentionally creating Binance to serve as a “criminal enterprise to facilitate money laundering on a global scale.”
The plaintiffs say the Binance officials knew Hamas and other designated foreign terrorist organizations regularly used the cryptoexchange and actively assisted them “at a time when Hamas, in particular, was publicly directing its donors to send funds” to its Binance cryptowallets.
Binance officials also disregarded filing required suspicious activity reports and manipulated how qualifying transactions were reported to prevent any scrutiny by U.S. banking regulators, the plaintiffs argue.
Binance “actively tried to shield its Hamas customers and their funds from scrutiny by U.S. regulators or law enforcement — a practice that continues to this day,” the plaintiff families say.
The plaintiffs seek compensatory damages in amounts to be determined at trial, treble damages due to alleged international terrorism-related activities, legal costs and other damages.
Binance officials told UPI they are aware of the federal complaint but cannot comment on active litigation.
The crypto exchange said it fully complies with internationally recognized sanctions laws and in 2025 had a direct exposure to illicit flows of less than 0.02% of platform volume, which it said is significantly below the industry average.
“We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars, expanded our global compliance-related workforce to over 1,280 specialists (22% of our entire workforce), and built real-time intelligence-sharing partnerships with law enforcement worldwide,” Binance said.
“We remain steadfast in our commitment to working with regulators, law enforcement and our users to protect the integrity of the global digital-asset ecosystem.”