Since the war began, thousands of people in Gaza have been seeking help online in the form of private donations. This has opened up opportunities for fraud. According to NDR research, one group in Gaza has committed fraud worth millions.
A young man in a wheelchair looks at the camera with a serious face. Two scarred stumps stick out from the legs of his shorts. "Peace be with you," he says in Arabic. "Thank you for your donations and for being with me these past months." Seventeen-year-old Ahmed Al-Ghalban from Gaza posted this video in July 2025 on his Instagram profile with more than 300.000 followers. He told how he lost both his legs and several fingers in an attack by the Israeli army in the spring. Through fundraising platforms such as GoFundMe or Chuffed, he and his family are asking for help - in this way they have already raised several tens of thousands of euros.
Identity theft
However, in September, a video of Ahmed in a wheelchair suddenly appeared on a fake X profile under the name "Ahmed Gaza". The profile used his photos and videos and called for donations via a PayPal account. According to NDR, the scammers stole Ahmed Al-Ghalban's identity. Instead of him, the money went to them. This is not an isolated case. The fake account was linked to around 20 X profiles, which in September coordinated the same call for donations and the same PayPal account. They copied content from real Palestinians on social media. In two cases, real people confirmed to NDR that the profiles were fake. X did not respond to a journalist's inquiry, but it blocked the accounts.
The trail of these fake profiles led to a group of alleged fraudsters based in Gaza. According to NDR's research, they have collected donations in the millions since the start of the war via crowdfunding platforms, PayPal and cryptocurrencies.
The trail leads to a family in Gaza
The starting point of the investigation is a man named Ahmad Kaled A. His appeal for donations was shared on fake profiles. Based on his social media activities, the NDR was able to identify six other people, who apparently belong to the same family and live in Gaza.
Fake profiles are just one way this group of alleged scammers operate. They also claim to run several different humanitarian initiatives in Gaza — simultaneously posting photos and videos of identical humanitarian actions. For example, Ahmad Kaled A. posted a video in early September showing him distributing water from a vehicle in Deir Al-Balah, wearing a yellow vest with the logo of his "Waves of Solidarity" initiative. Just a day later, a man named Muhamad Kaled A. posted a video on Iksu with the same scene, calling for donations for another organization called the "Muhammad Khaled Relief Foundation." The videos show that both men were in the same place at the same time, but filmed so that they could not see each other. NDR found several such examples. Both men refused to answer reporters' questions.
Suspicious crypto transactions
Muhamad Kaled A. has been particularly successful in raising donations via GoFundMe. He and other family members are also actively encouraging people to send money in cryptocurrencies. These transactions suggest that this may not be just a small-scale scam.
At the heart of the family's activities is an initiative called "Bitcoin for Palestine," founded by a man named Yousef Mahmoud A., who is reportedly the uncle of Muhammad Khaled A. The initiative was founded before the war in 2023 and was hailed as a "lifesaver" in the crypto industry in 2024. However, serious allegations of fraud emerged earlier this year. An Egyptian bitcoin entrepreneur wrote on X that he had invested $2 million in "Bitcoin for Palestine," but that Yousef Mahmoud A. had mostly kept the money for himself and bought cars and weapons. Yousef Mahmoud A. denies the allegations, claiming he was the victim of defamation.
Large sums of money
NDR has numerous pieces of evidence and insider testimony indicating that donations in the millions were collected for "Bitcoin for Palestine" alone. Other appeals by family members brought in an additional half a million dollars.
The family, however, carries out certain actions such as distributing water, but there is no reliable evidence of how the large sums of donations were actually used. The question of why they resorted to deceptive methods such as multiple use of the same videos and fake profiles remains open. They did not want to answer these questions.
Disadvantages of large crowdfunding platforms
The case exposes the weaknesses of large platforms such as Australia's Chuffed and GoFundMe. Thousands of campaigns have been launched to raise private donations for Palestinian families since the start of the war in Gaza. GoFundMe said that around 12.000 campaigns related to the Middle East crisis had been launched in Germany since October 7, with a total amount of money raised of around 32 million euros.
The platforms claim to conduct checks to prevent fraud, but these checks are usually limited to ensuring that the recipient of the donation is actually from Gaza. The alleged fraudsters from Deir Al-Balah easily met this requirement. For example, the Muhammad Khaled Relief Foundation has raised more than $50.000 through GoFundMe since March 2024.
Platforms investigate fraud allegations
GoFundMe announced an investigation and has already removed the donation page of Ahmad Khaled A. "If our verification process cannot reliably verify the campaign, the flow of funds, or the recipient of the donations, the campaign is removed," a spokeswoman said. Donors are then automatically refunded or informed about their eligibility for a refund.
Chuffed has also removed several suspicious campaigns. Manager Jenny Smith said the platform takes fighting fraud and being accountable to the people of Gaza seriously. Sometimes legitimate campaigns can look like spam, "signs of desperate families begging for help." That's why it's important to thoroughly investigate any allegations, she said.
Ahmed Al-Ghalban u Italiji
Ahmed Al-Ghalban, a teenager who lost his legs and had his identity stolen, now lives in Italy. He and his family were evacuated from Gaza over the summer with the help of the World Health Organization and the Italian government. His Instagram profile shows videos of him taking his first steps with prosthetic legs. Ahmed continues to raise funds for his new life.
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