Hezbollah recruiting convicts in Latin America for revenue, relaxing ideological requirements

Hezbollah is increasingly recruiting convicted felons in Latin America, targeting those facing financial difficulties and harboring resentment toward the courts, while relaxing its requirements for ideological alignment, according to a new assessment published by The Washington Institute and written by Lucas Gualtieri, a Brazilian federal prosecutor who specializes in organized crime and Hezbollah’s use of criminal networks.

Operation Trapiche, a counterterrorism operation launched by Brazil’s Federal Police in November 2023 with support from Israel’s Mossad, has shed light on Hezbollah’s efforts to outsource operatives, criminal revenue generation, and financial services in Latin America, building capabilities the group can plausibly deny if confronted.

Hezbollah has long outsourced operations in Latin America, as illustrated by the 2021 expulsion of two criminals hired by the Iran-backed group to target an Israeli in Bogotá. However, the investigation has uncovered what amounts to an assembly line for operatives. Rather than simply contracting hitmen, Hezbollah recruits men with no prior ties to the group, flies them to Lebanon for training, and sends them back to their home countries to scout for potential Israeli and Jewish targets.

Gualtieri said Hezbollah was specifically seeking to recruit financially vulnerable convicted felons with no prior ties to the group or Lebanon. In intercepted audio, recruiters discussed looking for aggrieved individuals who had been “locked up” and therefore felt they “owe the courts,” he said.

By recruiting men without prior ideological or personal ties to Hezbollah or Lebanon, Gualtieri said, the group could deny involvement in attacks, allowing any resulting unrest to be dismissed as hate crimes committed by fringe extremists.

Lucas Passos Lima, whose conviction was reinstated by Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice last month after a federal court ruled that his role in a network targeting Jews and Israelis was motivated by financial gain rather than terrorism, had returned from Lebanon with more than $5,000 in untraceable cash. Had the superior court failed to convict Lima of terrorism, Gualtieri said, Brazil could have been viewed as a permissive environment for the group, and individuals who support terrorism for personal gain could have escaped more severe sentencing despite their knowing involvement in plots.

Hezbollah has also increasingly relied on revenue generated by criminal networks in Latin America, he said, offering the example of the discovery of Brazilian tobacco shops that helped fund plane tickets for recruits.

The shops were initially identified by tax inspectors investigating a tobacco shop in Belo Horizonte’s Mercado Central that was selling banned electronic cigarettes. The case was referred to counterterrorism police in October 2023 after an FBI warning about a criminal financial network funding Hezbollah raised alarm among Brazilian officials.

Although the shops were registered to Hussain Abdulmajid, investigators found that his brother, Mohamad Khir Abdulmajid, a Syrian-born naturalized Brazilian, was the real operator. The FBI memo also flagged Haissam Houssin Diab, a Lebanese-born naturalized Brazilian whose passport and travel bookings were later found in Abdulmajid’s cloud storage.

Abdulmajid is believed to have approached at least five Brazilians through social media and paid for their short trips to Beirut, including stays in upscale hotels. There, they allegedly received operational instruction and training in clandestine communications. This included learning a physical recognition signal and using shared email accounts as dead drops, leaving messages unsent in draft folders. They were also instructed to photograph Lebanese tourist sites to support a cover story that they had traveled for leisure.

Lima was recruited through Abdulmajid’s network and flew to Lebanon twice in 2023. After his first trip, researchers found that he had geolocated and filmed three synagogues, a Jewish cemetery, the Israeli embassy, and a rabbi in and around Brasília. He had also trained with firearms, purchased untraceable radios and surveillance equipment, and approached a pilot about exfiltration routes that would bypass migration controls.

Although Hezbollah’s use of criminal enterprises to raise funds is not new, he argued the these cases matter because the group did not need to launder its own money to evade sanctions. Dante Felipini, a São Paulo cryptocurrency broker arrested in a separate money-laundering case as part of Operation Colossus, established three separate cryptocurrency wallets for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah. Prosecutors charged him with money laundering, currency evasion, membership in a terrorist organization, and terrorism financing.

Gualtieri argued that Felipini’s case showed Hezbollah views outsourcing as both a tactic and a recruitment opportunity. After the cryptobroker traveled to Baalbek in January 2023, where he fired rifles in the hills with Hezbollah terrorists, Felipini told a contact that the trip had been his “baptism” into the group.

Gualtieri argued that the cases highlighted the need for authorities to pursue terrorism-related charges alongside other criminal offenses where the evidence supports them. He noted that such charges can lead to longer sentences and that relying solely on formal terrorism charges can understate the extent of Hezbollah’s activities.

He also highlighted a precedent set by Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice, which affirmed that financial motivation does not preclude terrorism liability when suspects knowingly participate in a terrorist plot, even if they do not share the group’s ideological motives.

Finally, he said authorities should strengthen financial monitoring to identify suspicious cryptocurrency transfers and shell companies, continue tracking networks after assets are frozen, and expand national mechanisms for designating terrorist organizations. While international cooperation was crucial to Operation Trapiche, Gualtieri argued that domestic enforcement tools remained essential to disrupting Hezbollah’s networks and prosecuting those involved.