Virginia man convicted of funneling money to Islamic State group

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A northern Virginia man targeted by an FBI sting operation has been convicted on terrorism charges for collecting funds on behalf of the Islamic State group.

Mohammed Chhipa, 35, of Springfield, was convicted late Friday afternoon on all five counts against him, including providing material support to a terrorist organization, after a weeklong trial at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The jury deliberated for about three hours.

Prosecutors said Chhipa met several times with an undercover FBI operative who gave him hundreds of dollars on multiple occasions in 2021 and 2022, earmarked for a Syrian woman and Islamic State group member known as Umm Dujanah.

Prosecutors alleged that bank records showed that Chhipa sent more than $74,000 to the Islamic State group in a similar fashion — collecting donations personally from supporters, converting the cash into bitcoin and sending it to bank accounts in Turkey for use by the group.

Chhipa was particularly interested in sending funds to help women from the Islamic State group escape prison camps to which they had been sent after the terrorist group was routed from territory it held in Iraq and Syria, prosecutors said in the trial's opening statements.

Chhipa's lawyers had argued that their client was a target of relentless investigation by the FBI, and played on his clear desire to find a wife by using undercover operatives who, among other ruses, pretended to be marriage brokers or even a willing bride.

“The FBI investigated Mohammed Chhipa for 10 years and came up with nothing. Nothing. So, after a decade of bearing no fruit, the FBI decided to create the crime themselves,” defense attorney Jessica Carmichael said during Friday's closing arguments.

Chhipa has said in court papers that he is now married to Allison Fluke-Ekren, an American from Kansas who is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Fluke-Ekren pleaded guilty last year to organizing and leading the Khatiba Nusaybah, a battalion in the Islamic State group in which roughly 100 women and girls learned how to use automatic weapons and detonate grenades and suicide belts.

Prosecutors, though, say that the marriage was conducted online and has no legal status in the U.S. They said Chhipa, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from India, has been trying to adopt Fluke-Ekren’s children.

Chhipa will be sentenced in May.