Financial institutions flagged more than $8 billion in potentially suspicious wire payments from 2021 to 2025 that were sent through U.S. money transmitters at the direction of foreign agents, the Treasury Department said Friday.
Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, disclosed the figure in an alert to financial institutions released as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent visited Minnesota to promote the administration’s anti-fraud push.
The alert warns that foreign agents may direct U.S.-based money services businesses to pay recipients in third countries, which can obscure who ultimately receives the money and why it was sent.
FinCEN said such arrangements could be exploited for money laundering or terrorist financing, Fox News reported. Money services businesses include companies that send money overseas for customers.
The $8 billion reflects reported suspicious activity, not proven fraud or money recovered. Suspicious activity reports are leads for investigators, and many flagged transactions turn out to be legitimate.
The term “foreign agents” in the alert refers to overseas businesses that pay out transfers on behalf of U.S. money transmitters, not to spies or agents of foreign governments.
The alert calls on money transmitters to conduct risk-based due diligence on their foreign agents and partners, investigate payments with unclear business purposes and end relationships that do not comply.
Banks are urged to scrutinize payments that are unsupported, repetitive, in round-dollar amounts or otherwise inconsistent with a customer’s business, and to file reports when warranted.
Charities Also in the Spotlight
FinCEN issued a separate notice urging banks to scrutinize nonprofits’ donors, funding streams and ties. It describes sham charities that divert money to illicit activity, fraud that enriches organizers and embezzlement by insiders.
“When greed meets negligence, the American people suffer,” Bessent said. He said Treasury had stopped nearly $190 million in funds tied to overseas fraud and returned more than $100 million to U.S. victims.
Bessent appeared with FBI Director Kash Patel, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson at a news conference in Minnesota.
Officials there cited 115 people charged, 75 convictions and nearly 3,000 subpoenas across Minnesota, according to a syndicated version of the Fox report. “This FBI follows the money,” Patel said.
Fox also reported that FBI agents executed multiple search warrants as part of the effort, and that prosecutors are building out a large-scale indictment.
The announcement came the same week Salim Said, a co-conspirator in the Feeding Our Future case, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. He was convicted on 21 counts in a $49 million child nutrition scheme.
Bessent said Treasury is working with the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud “to help prevent this kind of abuse from happening again, in Minnesota or anywhere else.”
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