NBA official Sha’Rae Mitchell went down hard during Thursday night’s game between the Atlanta Hawks and Brooklyn Nets after she ran into a camera operator and appeared to injure her head in the collision.
Mitchell, who is in her first season as an NBA staff official, was jogging full speed along the court with just over eight minutes left in the game when she took a hard fall to the ground after running into a camera operator, who appeared to be filming the crowd courtside during play.
Referee Sha’Rae Mitchell (98) signals during the fourth quarter of an NBA basketball game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 12, 2026.(Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
The game was stopped as Mitchell appeared to grab the back of her head, bent over in obvious pain.
She walked off the court and sat down, continuing to grab at her head.
Referee Sha’Rae Mitchell holds her head after a collision during the fourth quarter of the Brooklyn Nets and Atlanta Hawks game at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 12, 2026.(Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
Mitchell reportedly returned to the game as Jalen Johnson recorded 21 points, nine rebounds and nine assists to help the Hawks extend the NBA’s longest current winning streak to eight games with a 108-97 victory over the Nets.
The 40-year-old referee joined the league officially this season after previously officiating 11 regular-season games as a non-staff official during the 2022-23 NBA season and four games during the 2021-22 season.
Rapper and entertainer Boosie Badazz reacts after watching referee Sha’Rae Mitchell (98) fall to the floor following a collision during the fourth quarter of an NBA basketball game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 12, 2026.(Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
Mitchell was a standout women’s college basketball player at UC Santa Barbara before she served on coaching staffs at Stanford University, UCLA and Coastal Carolina University. She then moved to officiating college basketball for several years before making her debut at the pro level.
Rachel Reeves will set out extra support next week for households across the UK facing a surge in the cost of heating oil due to the conflict in the Middle East.
The chancellor is expected to set out plans to assist those on low incomes or with other vulnerabilities, particularly in rural areas. The help will be delivered in England via councils using the new crisis and resilience fund.
While the amounts involved have not yet been set out, it is understood that ministers could provide extra support to this fund if needed. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, devolved governments will receive money to deliver the help.
Heating oil, which provides heating and hot water for an estimated 1.7m UK households, is not covered by Ofgem’s energy price cap.
In some examples seen by the Guardian this week, customers have seen quoted costs to refill tanks almost triple since the disruption to fuel supplies after the US-Israeli war on Iran began.
In Northern Ireland, heating oil is the primary heating source for two-thirds of households.
Reeves said this week she recognised the “unique challenges” faced by people reliant on heating oil, and has asked Spencer Livermore, the financial secretary to the Treasury, to discuss possible remedies with rural and Northern Irish MPs.
As well as putting pressure on petrol retailers not to exploit the Iran crisis to excessively increase forecourt prices, ministers have asked the Competition and Markets Authority watchdog to look out for unjustified increases in the price of heating oil.
People who use the fuel generally purchase it in bulk to fill tanks, often because their home is not connected to the mains gas network.
As wholesale prices of heating oil have risen, some people have had pre-existing orders cancelled, forcing them to order again at a higher price. Others have struggled to find suppliers willing to deliver to them.
While ministers are confident that Keir Starmer’s refusal to support the initial attack on Iran has the broad support of the public, they are deeply wary about the impact of higher fuel and petrol prices, particularly if the conflict drags on.
Set up to run from 1 April, the crisis and resilience fund gives English councils money to support communities, particularly with financial pressures. It has a funding of £1bn a year for an initial three-year period.
A Treasury source said: “Families who rely on heating oil can’t spread the cost – when the tank’s empty, you have to find hundreds of pounds upfront. That’s why the chancellor is providing targeted help for low‑income and vulnerable households across the UK.”
You don’t get what you don’t pay for! Microsoft’s GitHub is dialing back on expenses by removing several costly premium models from its free GitHub Copilot Student plan.
On Wednesday, Martin Woodward, GitHub VP of developer relations, soured relations with the site’s student developer community by breaking the unwelcome news.
Characterizing the plan change as an effort to make student access sustainable, Woodward said that, starting Thursday, March 12, complimentary access to Copilot will be managed under a new GitHub Student Plan alongside other GitHub Education benefits.
“As part of this transition, however, some premium models, including GPT-5.4, and Claude Opus and Sonnet models, will no longer be available for self-selection under the GitHub Copilot Student Plan,” he explained in a discussion forum post. “We know this will be disappointing, but we’re making this change so we can keep Copilot free and accessible for millions of students around the world.”
The student plan still has access to many models including Claude 4.5 Haiku (normal price = Input $1 / 1M tokens; Output $5 / 1M tokens for output), Gemini 3.1 Pro (Input $2 / 1M; Output $12 / 1M), and GPT-5.3 Codex (Input $1.75 / 1M; Output $14 / 1M).
But costlier top performers like GPT 5.4 (Input $2.50 / 1M; Output $15.00 / 1M), Sonnet 4.6 (Input $3 / 1M; Output $15 / 1M), and Opus 4.6 (Input $5 / 1M; Output $25 / 1M) are no longer part of the mix.
OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
GitHub’s decision has aroused ire. Woodward’s post had garnered just 21 up votes compared to 2,874 down votes at the time this article was filed, as well as more than a thousand comments in the past two days.
Most of the comments express disappointment, citing the educational benefits of having access to models that perform particularly well.
A forum participant posting under the name Sahad Rushdi remarked: “For many of us working on advanced engineering projects, Claude 4.6 Sonnet and Opus are not just ‘options’ – they are currently the most capable AI agents for coding, logic, and handling large-scale refactoring. Restricting these models from self-selection limits our ability to learn with the industry’s leading technology.”
That sentiment was echoed by an individual posting under the name Nguyễn Thế Toàn: “[T]he removal of premium models such as GPT-5.4, Claude Opus, and Claude Sonnet makes learning programming more difficult. These models are much better at explaining complex coding concepts, helping debug problems, and guiding students step by step when we are stuck.”
In response to the many calls to restore high-end model access, Woodward on Thursday offered a suggestion: Pay.
“We’ve now added the option so folks can upgrade from your GitHub Copilot Student plan to a paid GitHub Copilot Pro or GitHub Copilot Pro+ plan if you want to, while retaining the rest of your GitHub Student Pack benefits,” he said in an update to his initial post.
That’s exactly what Copilot users have been trying to avoid, and not just students. Only 3.3 percent of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 customers who bother with Copilot Chat actually pay anything for the service. One of the growing concerns for Microsoft investors is whether the company’s capex spending on infrastructure to support AI workloads will pay off. ®
The armed suspect who drove a vehicle into the hallway of a large Michigan synagogue complex that includes a school had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon just last week, an official said on Friday.
A potential mass-casualty event was averted when security guards already in place at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township on the outskirts of Detroit killed the driver before any harm could come to the synagogue’s staff, teachers and 140 children at the early childhood center there on Thursday afternoon.
The suspect was later named by the authorities as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, who was born in Lebanon and had become a naturalized US citizen.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is leading the investigation, described the attack on one of the nation’s largest Reform synagogues as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community.
Photographs of an FBI raid on Ghazali’s reported residence in Dearborn Heights, a Detroit suburb with a large Lebanese community, appeared on the website of the New York Post on Friday.
Ghazali came to the US in 2011 on a family-related visa as the spouse of a US citizen and was granted US citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The New York Times reported Friday that Ghazali had a job at Hamido, a Mediterranean food restaurant in Dearborn Heights, but had been missing from work in recent weeks, a colleague said.
“He’s the face of the restaurant,” Rami Achkar, a regular diner, told the newspaper. “I’ve known him for years.”
An Israeli airstrike killed four people in the eastern Lebanon town of Mashgharah on 5 March, Lebanon’s state agency and the Lebanese Health Ministry reported. A woman was also wounded.
Coinciding with US and Israeli strikes on Iran that began late last month, Israel also once again began attacking its neighbor Lebanon in an effort to eradicate the Iran-backed Hezbollah militancy.
The bombardment of Lebanon, which is continuing, marked a significant escalation in Israel’s growing offensive there, which began after Hezbollah fired missiles and drones into Israel in early March in retaliation for the attacks on Iran, as the conflict has mounted and widened rapidly.
A local official in Mashgharah, in central Lebanon, told the Associated Press on Friday that Ghazali’s two brothers and a niece and nephew were killed at their home in the 5 March airstrike just after sunset as they were having their fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The official, who requested anonymity because he could not publicly discuss details of the airstrike, told the AP that Kassim and Ibrahim Ghazali were killed, along with Ibrahim Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima. Ibrahim Ghazali’s wife was seriously wounded and remains in the hospital, the official said.
The official said that Kassim Ghazali was a well-known soccer coach and personal trainer while Ibrahim was a school bus driver in the village. The official added that Ayman Ghazali’s father was in the US and returned to Lebanon recently.
Iskander Barakeh, the mayor of Mashgharah, a religiously and politically diverse town of about 25,000 in the Bekaa valley, told the Guardian he did not know why the Ghazali residence was targeted.
“I asked a lot but no one said anything. He wasn’t affiliated with any party,” Barakeh said.
The mayor added that two multi-apartment blocks in the town were hit, as well as a community center, a school that was damaged indirectly, and a Christian cemetery.
“In Masghara you can consider it like Lebanon itself. Among Christians you have Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Protestants, Maronites and Latins,” he said.
“Among the Muslim groups you have Shia, Druze, Sunnis. As for political parties, everything exists there, every party in the world is represented.”
Thursday’s incident at the Michigan synagogue resulted in the vehicle driven by the suspect catching on fire and black smoke could be seen billowing from the building.
One security officer was hit by the vehicle and knocked unconscious but did not suffer life-threatening injuries, the local Oakland county sheriff, Mike Bouchard said. And 30 law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation.
Cassi Cohen, director of strategic development at Temple Israel, was in the hallway where the crash happened. She described hearing a loud bang and said she grabbed a few staff members, ran into her office and locked the door.
“When I heard the crash, I knew it was bad,” Cohen said.
She said the crash happened near a classroom and, in addition to the children, there were also more than 30 staff members in the synagogue.
Rabbi Arianna Gordon, from Temple Israel, thanked the security team, law enforcement and early childhood teachers for getting the children out safely and reunited with their parents amid the chaos and fear.
About a dozen parents sprinted to get their children soon after authorities cleared the building. Other families were reunited at a nearby Jewish Community Center.
Allison Jacobs, whose 18-month-old daughter is enrolled in Temple Israel’s day care, said she got a message from a teacher saying the children were okay even before she knew what happened.
“There are no words. I was in complete and utter shock,” she said.
Synagogues around the world have been on edge and further ramping up security since the US and Israel launched a war with Iran with missile strikes on 28 February.
Donald Trump said on Thursday: “It’s incredible that things like this happen” and called the Michigan attack a “terrible thing”.
However, Steven Ingber, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Detroit, said: “I’d love to say that I’m shocked, that I’m surprised, but I’m not.”
Oakland county is Michigan’s second-largest county with roughly 1.3m people. The majority of Detroit-area Jewish residents live there. Temple Israel has 12,000 members, according to its website.
At a similar time to the attack on the synagogue, a gunman killed one and injured two in a shooting at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
That incident could also have resulted in more carnage after the suspect opened fire in a classroom of students doing military training with the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, a college-based program, but he was subdued and killed by some of the students.
The suspect was later identified by authorities as Mohamed Jalloh, a former member of the army national guard who pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State. The authorities said he shouted the Arabic phrase “Allahu Akbar”, meaning Allah is the greatest, or God is great and the FBI is investigating the shooting as an alleged act of terrorism.
Iran is deploying explosive-laden drone boats disguised as wooden fishing vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, a defense expert has warned — a move that signals a new phase of hybrid maritime warfare in one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes.
Cameron Chell, CEO of drone technology firm Draganfly, spoke after the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) confirmed that a Marshall Islands–flagged oil tanker was struck March 1 by an Iranian unmanned surface vehicle north of Muscat, Oman.
“UKMTO has received confirmation that the vessel was attacked by an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV), and that the crew has been evacuated to shore,” UKMTO said in a threat assessment.
Reports also indicated that two additional oil tankers were hit March 11 by remote-controlled explosive boats in the Gulf, as Iran intensified attacks on foreign vessels following the start of the U.S. Operation Epic Fury against the regime on Feb. 28.
Persian Gulf shipping dips as Trump positions military against Iran.( Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The use of so-called “suicide skiffs” represents a growing asymmetric threat in the narrow, 21-mile-wide Strait, Chell warned, while highlighting the technological capabilities behind these attacks.
“The Iranians probably have use of radio remote control, line of sight, frequency hopping, or encrypted radio communication between the skiffs and the Hormuz shoreline,” Chell told Fox News Digital.
“These can be jammed and tracked, but when there’s 50 of these boats, it’s hard to try to find them all along this shoreline or to find a 20-foot wooden fishing boat that is laden with explosives.
“They can have one person controlling a swarm of 10 boats,” he said before describing how there “could also be autonomous swarming where they might have 10 boats that can act with a large level of independence, because they’re pre-programmed.”
“The boats would be used to ram into targets and explode,” Chell clarified.
Naval units from Iran and Russia simulate the rescue of a hijacked vessel during joint drills at the Port of Bandar Abbas in Hormozgan, Iran, on Feb. 19, 2026.(Iranian Army/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Sources said that Iran had also deployed about a dozen mines, complicating efforts to maintain any traffic through the critical waterway.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Sky News Thursday that the U.S. Navy, potentially alongside an international coalition, would escort ships when militarily feasible.
U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey also said discussions were underway with European counterparts stressing the global economic stakes tied to the strait. Chell, however, questioned current defensive readiness.
“The drone defense fleets that the U.S. Navy would not have been set up to take these suicide skiffs out,” Chell said.
“The U.S. would be using manned aircraft in order to take them out, which are fantastic at taking out a large target, but inefficient in taking out 50 boats at one time that are an average of 25 or 30 feet in size, laden with explosives.
A screenshot of a marine traffic terminal showing vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on March 4, 2026.(Kpler/Marine Traffic)
“Given the Strait’s geography, it would require patrolling by many aircraft and would require pervasive surveillance over the area, a rapid response to any activity that’s happening,” he said.
As Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to keep the Strait closed as leverage against the U.S. and Israel, oil prices continue to surge, with Chell also highlighting the geographic advantage Iran holds.
“The geographic layout of the Strait lends itself very well to relatively unsophisticated suicide skiffs, unmanned surface vehicles or USVs,” he warned before describing how the area “lends itself to this low-cost, automatic, asymmetric warfare.”
“The Iranians can disguise them as fishing boats and can be anywhere from 12 to 30 feet and a boat could be of any description,” Chell said.
“These skiffs are equipped with basic remote control capabilities that may or may not be using GPS waypoints or manual remote control.”
“The skiffs are not autonomous, because the distance across the Strait is so short, and it’s very flat across this waterway, the communication signal could be carried for quite some time via a line of sight,” he added.
Emma Bussey is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Before joining Fox, she worked at The Telegraph with the U.S. overnight team, across desks including foreign, politics, news, sport and culture.
Marset was also wanted by Washington for allegedly laundering money through US banks, and Bolivia’s interior minister, Marco Antonio Oviedo, said on Friday that he was already being extradited to the US.
The arrest marks the end of Marset’s criminal career as the self-anointed “King of the South” – a moniker he had stamped on bricks of cocaine. It also signalled a return to law enforcement cooperation between Bolivia and the US under the centrist government of Rodrigo Paz, almost 20 years after his leftwing predecessor Evo Morales expelled both the US ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Marset was first arrested for drug trafficking in 2013 and spent years in prison in Uruguay, where he allegedly built connections with Primeiro Comando da Capital – the First Capital Command – one of Brazil’s most powerful organised crime groups, and Italy’s ’Ndrangheta mafia.
On his release in 2019 he moved to Paraguay on a fake Bolivian passport in the name of Gabriel de Souza Beuner, where he allegedly built the networks to traffic drugs from Bolivia, which is both a cocaine producer and key transit hub for Peruvian cocaine, and on to Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
In 2021, Marset was detained in Dubai while travelling on a fake Paraguayan passport, only to leave the United Arab Emirates legally within days after Uruguayan authorities issued him a new passport. The resulting scandal led to the resignations of several Uruguayan officials.
But as investigators in various countries closed in on him, Marset moved to Bolivia in 2022, now using a Brazilian passport and the name Luis Paulo Amorim Santos.
Around this time, Marcelo Pecci, the Paraguayan prosecutor in charge of dismantling Marset’s network in that country, was murdered while on his honeymoon in Colombia. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, accused Marset of having ordered the assassination.
Meanwhile in Bolivia, Marset hid in plain sight. He bought a second-division football team and installed himself in its starting lineup, appearing in matches shown on local TV.
Yet when Bolivian authorities raided Marset’s mansion in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in July 2023, he was already gone, apparently tipped off ahead of time.
Marset had been on the run ever since, periodically posting videos in which he mocked Bolivian authorities, and even once flying a Uruguayan TV presenter in by helicopter to interview him in his hideout.
In the end, Bolivian police found him in the same city where he first eluded them two years ago.
Not all fast-food cheeseburgers are created equal, according to award-winning butchers who work with quality beef every day.
When asked to name their top chains for burgers, three meat experts pointed to chains they say are a cut above the rest — and the picks may surprise some fans of the usual fast-food giants.
Nick Lenters, owner and operator of Old Station Craft Meats in Waukee, Iowa, Rob Levitt, head butcher and chef at The Publican and Publican Quality Meats in Chicago, and Josh Turka, owner of 5th Quarter Butcher + Provisions in Waitsfield, Vermont, weighed in on the debate.
Fresh — not frozen — meat is key to preventing the patty from drying out, along with burgers cooked to order.
A good sear and crispy edges are signs that a burger was cooked fresh rather than sitting under a heat lamp, one butcher said.(iStock)
“The best brands cook burgers to order so that the texture of the burger does not deteriorate while sitting in a warmer for extended periods of time,” Lenters told Allrecipes.
In addition to classic American cheese, fresh toppings, a flavorful sauce and a hearty bun, they say to look for a good sear and crispy edges.
Culver’s describes the ButterBurger as “a family specialty with a little extra.”
“We use only fresh, never frozen beef, seared on a grill after you order,” the Wisconsin-based chain’s website states.
2. Shake Shack
Shake Shack’s ShackBurger features crisp lettuce, tomato and sauce with its juicy Angus beef patty.(Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Turka named Shake Shack’s beef smash burgers his fast-food MVP, praising the crispy edges, made-to-order preparation and commitment to quality sourcing.
He called it a “damn good burger” in comments to AllRecipes, highlighting the double stack with classic American cheese as a near-perfect example of the style.
Lenters also ranked the chain highly among his picks.
The ShackBurger is the chain’s signature item. The company describes the made-to-order burger as featuring “a quarter pound per patty of 100% Angus beef,” according to its website.
Founded in New York, Shake Shack has since expanded to more than 30 states.
3. Portillo’s
Portillo’s, known for Chicago-style hot dogs, also impressed experts with its char-broiled burgers.(Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Levitt said Portillo’s is an underrated burger option.
Founded in 1963 as a small hot dog stand outside Chicago, the chain is best known for its Italian beef and Chicago-style hot dogs; but it also impressed him with its char-broiled, one-third-pound patties topped with classic fixings on a toasted, cornmeal-dusted bun.
Portillo’s operates over 70 locations across multiple states, including Illinois, Arizona, California and Texas.
If you can’t make it to one of those three chains, you can still recreate a comparable burger at home with a few key techniques, the experts say.
Use 70/30 ground beef for maximum flavor and juiciness, forming two-ounce balls and smashing them onto a hot cast-iron skillet to create crispy edges, they recommend.
Cook for about two minutes, flip, add American cheese — and cook briefly until melted.
Portillo’s burgers feature one-third-pound patties topped with classic fixings on a toasted, cornmeal-dusted bun.(Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Stack the patties on a toasted, buttered bun — preferably a potato roll — and top with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles and a simple special sauce made from mayo, ketchup, chopped dill pickles and a splash of Worcestershire or fish sauce for a burger approved by butchers.
Fox News Digital’s Andrea Margolis contributed reporting.
Deirdre Bardolf is a lifestyle writer with Fox News Digital.
Ravie LakshmananMar 13, 2026Encryption / Data Protection
Meta has announced plans to discontinue support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for chats on Instagram after May 8, 2026.
“If you have chats that are impacted by this change, you will see instructions on how you can download any media or messages you may want to keep,” the social media giant said in a help document. “If you’re on an older version of Instagram, you may also need to update the app before you can download your affected chats.”
Weeks into the Russo-Ukrainian war in February 2022, the company made encrypted direct messaging available to all adult users in both countries.
The development comes days after TikTok said it does not plan to introduce E2EE to secure direct messages on the platform, telling BBC News that the technology makes users less safe and that it wants to protect users, especially young people, from harm.
Late last month, Reuters also reported that Meta proceeded with plans to adopt encryption messaging services in Facebook and Instagram despite internal warnings in 2019 that doing so would hinder the company’s ability to detect illegal activities, such as child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or terrorist propaganda, and flag them to law enforcement.
E2EE has been hailed as a win for privacy, as it ensures that only communicating users can decrypt and read messages, thereby locking out service providers, bad actors, and other third parties from accessing or intercepting the data.
However, law enforcement and child safety advocates have argued that the technology creates a safe space for criminals, as it prevents companies from complying with warrants to turn over message content – a problem referred to as the “Going Dark” phenomenon.
This year, the European Commission is expected to present a Technology Roadmap on encryption to identify and evaluate solutions that enable lawful access to encrypted data by law enforcement, while safeguarding cybersecurity and fundamental rights.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran’s leadership was “desperate and hiding,” after US-Israeli strikes. But scenes from Tehran showed Iran’s President and Foreign Minister joining Quds Day rallies.
EXCLUSIVE: Cryptocurrency infrastructure linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) continued operating during the country’s nationwide internet blackout following the Feb. 28 U.S.–Israeli strikes, a cyber intelligence report reviewed by Fox News Digital claims, allowing hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto to move out of the country.
Omri Raiter, founder and CEO of RAKIA, a cyber intelligence firm that develops data analysis platforms used by governments and security agencies, told Fox News Digital his team began monitoring Iranian cryptocurrency activity in real time after the attacks and quickly detected a surge of funds leaving Iranian-linked crypto accounts.
“We’ve seen a surge of funds since the first hours of the war,” Raiter said. “It started with tens of millions in the first hours and it grew to hundreds of millions and more. Money was just flowing out from Iranian crypto accounts.”
Wallets linked to the IRGC received more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency in 2025, according to the internal report, based on blockchain intelligence data cited by RAKIA. The report also cites publicly available data from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, which estimated Iran’s cryptocurrency ecosystem reached $7.78 billion in activity in 2025.
Strikes on the Iranian leadership, the IRGC, and Iranian naval vessels and oil infrastructure have roiled the markets.( Sasan / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)
Raiter said the data suggests Iran has developed a significant crypto-based financial infrastructure capable of operating even during heavy sanctions and communications shutdowns.
“The IRGC has been financing proxy operations through the very same crypto corridors that sanctions were designed to shut down,” Raiter said.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned cryptocurrency exchanges tied to Iranian actors Jan. 30, marking one of the first times the U.S. targeted entire digital asset platforms rather than individual wallets for sanctions evasion linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the move was part of a broader effort to disrupt financial networks connected to Tehran, Iran.
“The Treasury will continue to pursue Iranian networks and corrupt elites who enrich themselves at the expense of the people,” Bessent said in a Treasury press release in January and added,x “This also applies to attempts by the regime to use digital assets to circumvent sanctions.”
The recent surge appears to reflect two parallel trends: funds moving to support Iran’s regional proxy networks and money being moved by individuals connected to the regime seeking to protect their personal wealth, according to RAKIA’s analysis.
“The proxy war funding and the personal capital flight are two sides of the same coin,” Raiter said. “They move through the same pipelines.”
Tehran’s skyline, including the Azadi Tower, became the backdrop to a crisis shaped as much by cyber disruption as by missiles in the sky. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Raiter said the firm identified cryptocurrency flows connected to networks previously associated with Iran-backed groups.
“Some of the accounts we saw are connected to areas where money historically flows to proxy wars,” he told Fox News Digital, citing activity linked to Lebanon and Yemen.
“Some of it could be people inside the IRGC trying to move their own money,” Raiter said. “But when you see the scale and the timing, it looks coordinated.”
The report produced by RAKIA claims the activity continued even after Iran imposed a sweeping internet shutdown across the country. National connectivity dropped to roughly 1% of normal levels during the blackout, according to internet monitoring group NetBlocks.
Military members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in western Tehran, Iran(Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Despite that shutdown, RAKIA researchers said they detected more than 1,100 active cryptocurrency nodes operating inside Iran.
“When the internet is at one percent and you still see over a thousand active crypto nodes, you’re not looking at retail users,” Tom Malca, RAKIA’s head of cyber and AI research, said in the report. “Those nodes require dedicated bandwidth, stable power and deliberate exemption from the shutdown.”
RAKIA researchers said the activity suggests specialized infrastructure continued operating even as millions of Iranian civilians were cut off from the internet.
Most of the nodes were concentrated in the Tehran–Qom corridor, according to the report, an area that includes major government and IRGC institutions. Smaller clusters were detected in Iranian cities including Isfahan, Mashhad, Tabriz and Kermanshah, according to the analysis.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Special forces walk on the U.S. flag during a rally commemorating International Quds Day, also known as Jerusalem Day, in Tehran, Iran, on March 28, 2025. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
RAKIA said its investigation relied on a combination of network monitoring and publicly available blockchain intelligence.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York for comment on the claims made in the report. The mission did not respond.
Efrat Lachter is a foreign correspondent for Fox News Digital covering international affairs and the United Nations. Follow her on X @efratlachter. Stories can be sent to efrat.lachter@fox.com.
