Terrorism on a budget: Americans who joined ISIS or planned attacks did so with little money

A new report on terrorism financing shows that for most Americans who sought to join or support ISIS, the trip was cheap and the money came easily, making it harder for investigators to track would-be terrorists.

“[S]ave for a few exceptions, the vast majority of U.S.-based IS supporters left a remarkably small financial footprint," said the report, which contrasted the low cost of funding ISIS terror with the Al Qaeda's big budget.

But they will require fine-tuning to keep pace with "less sophisticated" financial terror organizations like ISIS.

A dozen years later, Minnesota's Abdi Nur got $1,500 in donations from friends that helped him buy a plane ticket to Turkey and then travel to Syria, where he allegedly joined ISIS, according to court documents.

His checking account was used approximately 45 times in a Turkish border town and calls wiretapped by the FBI show he used $47,000 to support fellow ISIS fighters, including buying a car and paying for marriage gifts.

The report says of the just 14 cases where American ISIS supporters used illegal means to fund their support for ISIS, the most prevalent method involved student financial aid fraud

system has been overall effective during the ISIS-related mobilization of the last decade, it will have to adapt to modern financial tools that will be part of the future threat from terrorism groups, including "technological developments such as online crowdfunding, cryptocurrencies, and deep/dark web transactions."

Tom Winter is a New York-based correspondent covering crime, courts, terrorism and financial fraud on the East Coast for the NBC News Investigative Unit