Idaho ISIS suspect’s arrest highlights how 'crypto is increasingly popular' with extremist groups, expert says

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The FBI’s arrest of an 18-year-old in Idaho who allegedly was planning to attack churches in Coeur d’Alene this past weekend on behalf of ISIS highlights how crypto is becoming «increasingly popular with all extremist groups,» a terrorism expert tells FOX Business. 

Alexander Mercurio, prior to his arrest over the weekend in the northern Idaho resort city, had told a confidential source that «he was communicating with an individual online through whom he will donate money via cryptocurrency to the State (ISIS),» an FBI investigator had written in a criminal complaint released by the Justice Department.  

The complaint cited Mercurio as saying he had $8,000 in his savings account and $3,000 in his checking account.  

«Crypto is increasingly popular with all extremist groups… and definitely so with ISIS supporters,» Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told FOX Business.  

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Alexander Mercurio, shown here posing in front of an ISIS flag, was arrested on Saturday, April 6.

«I think over the last few years we have seen a steady stream of cases involving very young and often confused men (in many cases converts, that flirted with various extremist ideologies online only to eventually settle on ISIS' and plan attacks on their behalf),» Vidino added. «It is largely an online phenomenon, quite well monitored by the FBI.» 

Vidino also said that religious sites «have increasingly been targets of Americans inspired by ISIS.» 

Mercurio is now facing a federal charge of