By PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
THE US Treasury Department has flagged more than $8 billion in potentially suspicious cross-border wire payments.
Foreign agents directed the payments through US-based money services businesses (MSBs) between 2021 and 2025, the organization said.
The disclosure came as the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an alert asking financial institutions to watch for suspicious activity involving certain cross-border payments involving U.S. MSBs.
“Bad actors may exploit certain U.S. MSBs’ cross-border relationships to move funds through the U.S. financial system while obscuring the ultimate beneficiaries and the underlying purposes of transactions,” FinCEN said.
“These structures can help conceal illicit activity, such as funding for terrorist organizations.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the alert during a visit to Minnesota. He also announced a separate FinCEN notice on the exploitation of charities and non-profit organisations.
The notice warned that criminals could use charities to facilitate terrorist financing, fraud and other illicit activity. It identified three types of schemes: sham charities diverting funds to illicit activity; fraudsters using donations to fund their lifestyles; and insiders embezzling from legitimate organisations.
Bessent said Treasury had stopped nearly $190 million in funds linked to overseas fraud. It had also returned more than $100 million to US victims.
“When greed meets negligence, the American people suffer,” he said.
Minnesota fraud crackdown
The announcement comes amid a wider crackdown on alleged fraud in Minnesota, which Bessent announced in January.
This week, a federal judge sentenced Salim Ahmed Said, a co-conspirator in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, to 30 years in prison.
A jury convicted Said on 21 counts, including wire fraud, bribery and money laundering. Prosecutors said he helped defraud a federally funded child nutrition programme of millions of dollars.
In May, the leader of a Minnesota non-profit group was sentenced to 41 years in prison after she was convicted of being the ringleader of a $250 million fraud scheme.
Aimee Bock, 45, was charged in 2022 with using her non-profit group Feeding Our Future to enact what the Justice Department said was the largest known fraud against the U.S. government’s relief programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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