New York woman charged with sending $85,000 in Bitcoin to support Isil

A New York woman has been charged with obtaining $62,000 (£63,000) in Bitcoin which was sent to support the Islamic State.

Zoobia Shahnaz, a 27-year-old lab technician, was arrested at her home in Brentwood, on Long Island, on Wednesday night.

Shahnaz, a US citizen born in Pakistan, is accused of defrauding a series of American banks and sending the money through Pakistan, China and Turkey to fund the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

She is believed to have become radicalised online, and as early as August 2015 began searching for information on joining the Islamic State, with Google search records showing that she looked for "hijrah", or holy migration.

In January 2016 she volunteered to work with the Syrian American Medical Society in Jordan. She spent two weeks in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and in the Zataari refugee camp - described in court documents as a place "where ISIS exercises significant influence."

On returning to the US she provided fake information to obtain bank loans and over a dozen credit cards, and then transferred the money into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

She then made the transfers to Isil, through shell companies, "to avoid transaction reporting requirements, conceal the identity, source and destination of the illicitly-obtained monies, and, ultimately, benefit Isis," the court documents allege, using an alternative acronym for the terror group.

Shahnaz, who was earning more than £52,000 a year in her Manhattan hospital job, made the transfers between March and August of this year, prosecutors say.

At the same time, she was searching online for "top female jihadis" and "how much money can I send through Western Union". She also Googled known Isil recruiters and financiers.

She then sought to travel to Syria herself, having quit her job the previous month.

She told her family she was heading to work on July 31 but instead went to New York's JFK airport, where she was questioned at the gate as she readied to board a flight to Islamabad, Pakistan.

The itinerary included several days in Istanbul, and her route was described as "a common point of entry for individuals from Western countries travelling to join Isis in Syria."

She initially said she was visiting mosques and tourist sites in Istanbul, but then admitted she did not know anyone and did not have any reservations at a hotel. She gave conflicting answers as to the money transfers, and was also found to be carrying $9,500 in undeclared cash and electronic devices whose contents she had attempted to erase.

The devices were found to contain searches for "one-way ticket to Istanbul".

Her lawyer, Steve Zissou, is yet to comment.

Prosecutors have asked that she be held without bail.

If convicted she faces a 30 year sentence for bank fraud and 20 years on each money laundering count.