Islamists Linked to Facebook Scam?

There are an endless number of nostalgia groups on Facebook with millions and millions of members collectively. Many are seemingly harmless; others are not. Together, the members in these groups add up to millions of people, most of them Americans, many of them older, who often volunteer personal information as they reminisce.

The real purpose of many of these groups is to scam you, steal your personal information, get you to volunteer answers to security questions used by banks and brokerages, and rob you blind.

They even want to sell you shirts and quilts made by their autistic son. Isn’t that nice? Assuming you’re not wary about sharing your name, address, and credit or debit card information with the same people who run the Facebook group where you talk about things your bank uses to keep your accounts secure like the street you grew up on, your high school mascot, or where you went to elementary school.

Diane Yellen, whoever they are in actuality, is an admin in groups including I Grew Up in Massachusetts, I Grew Up in Michigan, I Grew up in Arkansas, and I Grew Up In Nevada.

If you look at the ‘follows’ list for the admins running these groups with American sounding names like Barbara Walters, Diana Yellen and Juwel Khan, you’ll notice most of their follows are of people in Bangladesh.

Barbara Walters, an admin or moderator in dozens of these groups, lists Islamic poetry among their favorite music, raising the troubling possibility that this criminal activity could be funding Islamist terrorism.

On March 7, 2025, a mob of Islamists gathered in the Bengali capital of Dhaka after Friday prayers, demanding that the democratic government set up a caliphate in its stead. Officers reportedly struggled to control the crowd, which threw stones at police.

“Khilafat will liberate Palestine and Kashmir," read messages spread by protesters in support of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a terrorist group that celebrated the October 7 attacks, describing Hamas as 'heroes' on their website.

Hizb ut-Tahrir was founded in 1953 in Jerusalem by Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, a Palestinian Islamic scholar from Haifa who was educated in Egypt and served as a qadi, or religious court judge. The group is recognized as a terrorist organization in Bangladesh, India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Germany, the UK, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, as well as in Turkey, Egypt, and other countries in the middle east, not including Lebanon, Yemen, and Palestine.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is not designated as a terrorist group in the United States, and has an American chapter, Hizb ut-Tahrir America. According to the group, “Muslims in the United States are being dared, duped, and ultimately deceived into adopting voting in the kufr U.S. secular democracy/capitalism by the enemies of Islam… This is a satanic plan where elections are attempts to integrate Muslims.”

On their website, they also say:

“You must realize that the United States is an enemy state that works round the clock to subvert the interests of the Islamic [community]… America is making plans against you as Muslims whether you are part of a political party or not…

…stand with Hizb ut Tahrir and give your support to the party in re-establishing the Khilafah which will rule by the Qur’an and Sunnah, build a strong military and eliminate US and Britain-India’s control over the Muslim [community].”

A former member who denied that the group was a terrorist organization told CBS News that, “…they do believe in using violent force to remove a democratic government,” in particular by “infiltrating armies” in countries where Muslims gain a majority.

Omar Bakri established Hizb ut-Tahrir's branch in the UK. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he was banned from entering the UK just a few years after September 11. Following the July 7, 2005 London bombings, The Sunday Times reported that "a dozen members" of another terror group he founded, Al-Muhajiroun "have taken part in suicide bombings or have become close to Al-Qaeda and its support network,” and the UK’s Home Office told him he would not be allowed to return to the country.

Bakri is a radical Muslim cleric who is also known for having described the September 11 hijackers as "the magnificent 19." In December 2004 he vowed that Muslims would give the West "a 9/11, day after day after day," if Western governments did not capitulate to Islamists.

In November 2010, Bakri was sentenced to life in prison in a Lebanese terrorism case that he claimed to know nothing about. He was released on bail after witnesses who initially testified against him withdrew that testimony, but in April 2014, he was investigated again by Lebanese law enforcement due to his alleged involvement in conflicts simmering between the area's Alawite community and local Muslim Sunnis.

Alawites are the same Muslim community currently being targeted for a genocide in Syria that students in the west have been conspicuously silent about. After Bakri fled his home, Lebanese authorities announced he was wanted for "endangering national security."

He was arrested the following month, after which the Lebanese Interior Minister at the time, Nouhad Machnouk, made a statement that that Bakri "has contributed in every aspect in supporting terrorism.”

Bakri was sentenced to six years in in October 2014 for founding a Lebanese affiliate of the Al-Qaeda linked Syrian terrorist group Al-Nusra Front, and of building a training camp for Nusra Front fighters in Lebanon. He was released from prison on March 30, 2023, much to the delight of Islamist jihadis. His current whereabouts are unknown.

In a phone interview with CBS News from 2008, a spokesperson for Hizb ut-Tahrir America said that the group was financed via “volunteers and donations that come through personal contacts.”

He also said that the role of the group in America was to "remind Muslims of their culture" and influence public opinion by showing "Islam as a viable way of life."

The website where the unidentified Facebook group admins who claim to be from the United States sell things like t-shirts and competitively priced quilts featuring states like Texas, Florida, California, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Michigan, OurNewDesign.com, claims to be based at 10 Corporate Drive in Burlington, MA, a suburb of Boston.

Area code 802 is the telephone area code for nearby Vermont, but the “abuse contact number” for their registrar Purple IT begins with the country phone code for Bangladesh, +880, which makes sense if you dig a little bit further.

The registrar, like many of the admin follows, is based in Bangladesh.

This is where things get messy. During the pandemic, the Attorney General’s office in the state of New York began investigating Endurance International Group in relation to phishing scams of a similar nature surrounding coronavirus. Endurance operated HostGator and Domain.com, and their headquarters was located at the address in Burlington, MA.

Endurance International has since been acquired by Newfold Digital, which is based out of Jacksonville, Florida. Newfold Digital is owned by Clearlake Capital, which is based in Santa Monica, California, and run by an Iranian–American billionaire, Behdad Eghbal, and José E. Feliciano, a Puerto Rican-born American billionaire.

Clearlake Capital is a “private equity powerhouse” with offices in Santa Monica, Dallas, London, Dublin, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi. They have over $85 billion in assets including Newfold Digital, Chelsea Football Club, and Holley Incorporated, who make automotive performance parts.

It is common for people to use the address of their registrar or domain host in lieu of a physical address of their own; it’s even more common among scammers, and it’s unlikely there’s a direct relationship between Endurance and the Bengali scam outfit.

Purple IT is based in Bangladesh, and was founded in June 2012 by Saleh Ahmed and Mohammad Masumul Haque. Haque graduated with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Stamford University in Bangladesh. It is unknown what their role in all of this is; they too may simply be a middleman offering technical services like domain registration.

The responsibility to investigate possible connections between these Facebook scammers and Hizb ut-Tahrir America will have to fall to someone else; someone that isn’t a two person team running a Crime and Culture platform. Preferably someone in Federal law enforcement.

UPDATE:

They appear to have updated their tactics since this was originally written; the copy is similar enough but they’ve posted this anonymously, and have taken out some of the less credulous words away from their pitch.

They also appear to be using a new url; GiftHavenUSA is registered in Reykjavik, with a phone number that traces to the Canadian province of Quebec.

This post appears to have been hijacked to give the ad a sheen of legitimacy; the comments are largely about a local New England radio legend Bob Steele.

Steele was a radio host with FOX WTIC Radio in Hartford, Connecticut for more than 66 years, and hosted morning radio in most of that time.

WTIC radio broadcasts 20,000 watts throughout Connecticut, as well as parts of Western Massachusetts and New York, including the outer New York City suburbs.