Daniel Flitton for the Age writes that tracking money when coming from various sources is exceptionally difficult. Charities were particularly vulnerable to exploitation by terrorist supporters.

“Money raised legitimately can be commingled with fund raise specifically to finance terrorism”

It might be used for  family support of terrorists who died. In other words for compassionate reasons. Very few have been discovered in Australia.  A more common form of money transfer was known as “hawala” where payments are made across the globe with little documentation but a lot of trust. This form of money transfer was exceptionally common place and not used only by Muslims. Money, is transferred around the world by Indian business men on trust unregulated yet guaranteed to reach the other end. A system that would collapse in western hands.

AUS-TRAC and ASIO would be simple minded to believe terrorist organizations used simple bank to bank transfers even via third parties to terrorists. Bitcoin is a headache for them as is TOR encryption so all they seem to be  doing is catching minnows Maybe that explains why it took 100 police to arrest one suspect.

The government says that 60 Australians are suspected of being in Syria/Iraq. It’s not known if they are fighters  some are believed to be in the refugee camps. It’s why the government has put the burden of proof on them when they come home or cancelling their passports before they do. Again this young man from Seabrook may not have been supporting a US terrorist fighter at all it all. It remains ‘alleged’ or ‘suspected’.

These terrorist groups have been established for over 10 years certainly wouldn’t consider crowd sourcing as the primary means of funding these sorts operations are more likely to be state criminally funded and  the source of those funds has always been difficult to stop.