A Massachusetts teenager was arrested Thursday on suspicion of running a gift card-reselling scheme to raise money for the terrorist group ISIS, federal prosecutors announced.
Mateo Ventura, an 18-year-old from Wakefield, raised $705 between January and May by giving gift cards to someone he believed supported ISIS, thinking the cards would be resold on the dark web and the profits sent to the group, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Massachusetts said.
Ventura is facing a charge of concealing the source of material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, prosecutors said. He's due in federal court in Worcester Thursday afternoon.
Ventura, who lives with his father, was arrested without incident by the FBI, with help from state and local police, the bureau said. His father was with him in court Thursday and said there's no way his son was trying to fund a terrorist group.
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"I know for a fact he's not a terrorist," Paul Ventura said.
He added that he had a troubled childhood and has learning disabilities and health issues.
"If he did something wrong...he would've said Dad I did something wrong," Paul Ventura added.
He is accused of having sent more money in the gift card scheme to ISIS when he was a minor; the 42 total donations, none more than $100, totaled $1,670, according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court.
Ventura used an encrypted messaging app to talk with a person he thought was part of ISIS but was really an undercover FBI agent, according to the affidavit. Their conversations, transcribed in part in the document, began in 2021 and involved Ventura pledging support to the leader of ISIS.
In September, Ventura allegedly broke off plans they'd discussed for him to join ISIS, but in January, he got back in touch, writing he was "strong and healthy" and "Fit to join mujhadeen." The FBI complaint said he sent a $25 Google Play gift card in January, saying he wanted the proceeds of reselling it to go "for war on kuffar," which means disbelievers.
Ventura kept speaking to the undercover agent, applying for credit cards to buy plane tickets to the Middle East, according to the complaint.
In April, on the day he booked a flight from Boston to Cairo, the teenager didn't take the flight, instead reaching out to the FBI requesting $10 million in exchange for information on an impending ISIS attack, the complaint said. Ten days later, the FBI called Ventura to say he the information he'd provided wasn't specific enough to be acted on; that night, he reached back out to the undercover agent, saying his flight was canceled and he panicked.
ISIS once ruled over a vast swath of Syria and Iraq through a brutal campaign and remains a threat to peace around the world, the U.S. government says. The group had access to up to $25 million in cash remaining from its short-lived caliphate as of November, according to the Treasury Department.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken declared two ISIS officials as terrorists, placing sanctions on them.
