To verify these movements, I experimented with some active accounts I have in the jihadist network which I have been using for years to study this phenomena and which therefore have a certain “credibility” in these quarters. In this public version of my research I will intentionally omit certain steps. The aim of my investigation is to describe and help to explain a phenomena and a method (one of the methods) of financing and above all of transferring money which is difficult to trace through a


direct personal experience. In no sense do I want it to be a manual, or an invitation to “do it yourself”. The other reason for omission is to protect certain information and active contacts and to preserve the investigative work of those responsible for national and international security who have been given full access to the unabridged results. For these reasons the contacts, email exchanges, accounts and phone numbers are not given, just as they are obscured in the images attached.
During the summer, as a sympathizer of the Caliphate I made it clear that I was having serious economic problems and consequently had less time to dedicate to activism for the cause. Obviously I was apologetic for this and expressed my deep disappointment. After a few passages between various contacts, I was introduced to someone willing to help me. Obviously personal meetings were out of the question to avoid pointless risks of exposing the network and being discovered. Two days later I received a whatsapp message telling me that I had received 999 dollars from California. This notification came from a friend of the person who had been “willing to help me” with a Pakistani mobile number.











Obviously, after checking that the sum was actually available for withdrawal I had it cancelled as it clearly came from the credit card of a totally innocent person.
This first step of the chain already poses serious issues of traceability.
1. How can this transaction be traced back to an action linked to terrorism?
2. What kind of connection could anyone find between Christine in California, Michele in Italy and the Caliphate?
3. If Michele is using a fake identity, how could he be traced even in the case of cyber crime?


The only trace could be the message which the sender has, almost certainly, cancelled or saved elsewhere and that I, if I were part of a terrorist group or had committed a crime, would equally certainly have cancelled.
As this was for my research, I told them that I was grateful for their help and, as it was more than I needed, offered to send part of the money to another supporter acting as an intermediary. The immediate reply was that this was not necessary because ISIS was great and that wealthy westerners were funding them through their stupidity. However, two days later my original contact sent me some information and asked me if I could send two 50 euro transactions to Pakistan and two to Lithuania, two via MoneyGram and two via Western Union to four separate names.