Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced financial reporting crackdowns in Minnesota Friday as part of the ongoing investigation into sprawling fraud schemes rocking the state, including deploying Treasury personnel to the ground.
The Treasury Department is rolling out a geographic targeting order focused on money services businesses — which are understood as financial operations that grant money transfers, currency exchange and check cashing — to ensure potential illegal activity is reported to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Bessent said the heightened security will monitor if funds are being transferred to places such as Somalia.
“This important tool will be used to make sure information regarding any such illicit activity is quickly reported to @FinCENnews and made available to our law enforcement partners,” Bessent posted to X Friday morning. “This will empower investigators to develop additional leads through increased scrutiny on funds going to areas of concern, such as Somalia.”
Bessent added that employees of the Treasury are on the ground in Minnesota, including to investigate money services businesses suspected of participating in the fraud schemes.
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“Additionally, Treasury personnel are on the ground working hard to uncover the facts. FinCEN will soon be issuing Notices of Investigations to MSBs of concern, and I can report that @IRSnews will be examining these businesses,” Bessent posted.
Bessent announced at the start of December that he opened an investigation into “feckless mismanagement” by Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz that allegedly allowed what U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel Rosen called “the largest Covid-19 fraud scheme in the country.”
The scandal initially centered on a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future. The group and its partners are accused of siphoning off as much as $250 million from a federal children’s nutrition program by allegedly creating hundreds of sham meal sites. At least 77 people have been charged in the scam, many of whom are from the Somali community in Minnesota.
The scandal, according to local Republican lawmakers, goes far deeper and could total over $2 billion in fraud, pointing to various nonprofits that have allegedly ripped off the government.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced it was launching its own investigation into “widespread fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs under Governor Tim Walz’s watch,” pointing to how the fraud allegedly affects multiple government programs.
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President Donald Trump has railed against the schemes while arguing “Somali gangs” should be deported.
“Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from,” Trump said on Truth Social of the fraud.
Minnesota Democrats, including Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar, have pushed back, accusing Trump of smearing the Somali community for political points.
“You commit crimes, you go to jail. Doesn’t matter what your race is, what your ethnicity, religion,” Walz said earlier in December. “But demonizing an entire group of people by their race and their ethnicity? A very group of people who contribute to the vitality — economic, cultural — of this state, is something I hoped we’d never have to see.”
Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller, Peter Pinedo and Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
