In July 2025, 17-year-old Ahmed al-Galban from Gaza posted a short video on his Instagram account, which now has over 300 thousand followers. In it, the boy tells how he lost both his legs in the spring and sends a mob for help. The appeal was placed on donation platforms such as GoFundMe or Chuffed. In a few months, several tens of thousands of euros were collected from people who were ready to help, writes ARD.
Stolen identity
But in September, a video of Ahmed in a wheelchair suddenly appeared on a fake profile on the X platform under the name “Ahmed Gaza“. The profile uses the young man's photos and videos and indicates a PayPal account for donations. An investigation by the German public broadcaster NDR found that fraudsters were behind this operation, who stole the identity of Ahmed al-Galban. Instead of the injured boy, the money went to them.
This scam is not an isolated case, the publication points out. The fake account is linked to around 20 accounts on the X platform, which in September apparently distributed the same call for donations in a coordinated manner and provided the same PayPal account. The fraudsters copied posts by Palestinians on social media. In two cases, NDR journalists received confirmation from the real people that the X accounts in question were fake.
X did not respond to NDR's inquiry, but the accounts were blocked. The trail leads to a group of alleged fraudsters, who are apparently based in Gaza. Since the start of the war in Gaza, they have stolen millions via crowdfunding platforms, PayPal or cryptocurrencies. This is what German investigative journalists have found.
A family in Gaza is pulling the strings
The investigation began with a man named Ahmad Khaled A., whose request for donations was replicated by the fake profiles. Based on his activity on social media, NDR was able to identify six other people who were apparently part of the same family and lived in Gaza.
The fake profiles are just one of the schemes of the alleged fraudsters. They also pose as initiators of aid campaigns for the Palestinians in Gaza. One example: At the beginning of September, Ahmad Khaled A. showed himself in a video distributing water from a car in the city of Deir Al-Balah. He is wearing a yellow reflective vest with the logo of his initiative “Waves of Solidarity“. Just a day later, a man named Muhammad Khaled A. posted a video of the same campaign on X to collect donations for another initiative called the “Muhammad Khaled Relief Foundation“. The two videos show that the men were in the same place at the same time, but filmed so that the two of them could not be seen together. NDR journalists have identified several such cases in which different members of the same family collect donations under different accounts.
Suspicious cryptocurrency transactions
Using the GoFundMe platform, Muhammad Khaled A. and other family members are urging people to send funds in cryptocurrency as well. And this shows that the scheme is not the work of ordinary petty criminals, but of something much larger, the public ARD also writes on the subject.
During the investigation, the German journalists came across an initiative called Bitcoin for Palestine. It was founded in 2023, that is, before the start of hostilities, by a man named Youssef Mahmoud A. - most likely the uncle of Muhammad Khaled A. Gradually, Bitcoin for Palestine managed to earn the name of an initiative that saves human lives. Until at one point, criticism and reports of fraud began to rain down on it. An Egyptian entrepreneur wrote in X that he had invested two million dollars in Bitcoin for Palestine. However, it turns out that Youssef Mahmoud A. used most of the money for himself to buy cars and weapons. Youssef Mahmoud A. denies the accusations. In response to a written inquiry, he only specified that he had kept ten percent of the two million donations for his own expenses and "the needs of the team" - had to buy a new car and a gun for protection.
There is no evidence of what the funds raised were used for
NDR has numerous pieces of evidence and insider testimony that support the assumption that millions of dollars were donated to Bitcoin for Palestine alone. In addition, the family has collected about half a million dollars through other channels. However, there is no reliable evidence that the funds raised were used legally. Furthermore, there is no answer to the question of what prompted the participants to use deceptive methods, such as fake X accounts.
This case reveals one of the weaknesses of large fundraising platforms such as Chuffed or GoFundMe. Since the start of the war in the Middle East, GoFundMe has run around 12,000 fundraising campaigns in Germany alone, raising €32 million in donations for people in need in the region. The platforms themselves carry out checks to prevent fraud, but they can only do one thing - establish that the recipient of the donation is indeed a person living in Gaza. The alleged fraudsters in Deir Al-Balah fulfilled this condition without any problems. And through the GoFundMe platform, the “Muhammad Khaled Relief Foundation“ has collected over $50,000 in donations since March 2024.
A new life in Italy
Ahmed al-Galban, the legless boy whose identity was stolen, now lives in Italy. Together with his family, he was evacuated from Gaza in the summer with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Italian government. Videos on his Instagram channel show his first attempts to walk with prosthetic legs. And he continues to collect donations - for his new life abroad, says the ARD publication.
Authors: Alice Echtermann ARD | Anna Prisze ARD