The Trump administration has identified more than $8 billion in potentially fraudulent cross-border wire payments directed by foreign agents, according to Slay News, as a widening crackdown brings FBI searches, a developing indictment and new scrutiny of foreign-funded nonprofits.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, flagged the suspicious transfers, which were made through U.S.-based money services businesses between 2021 and 2025. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration has already stopped large sums tied to overseas fraud and recovered money for American victims.
“When greed meets negligence, the American people suffer,” Bessent said in a statement. He said Treasury had stopped “nearly $190 million” in funds tied to overseas fraud and returned “more than $100 million” to U.S. victims, adding that the department is working with the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud to prevent similar abuse “in Minnesota or anywhere else.”
FinCEN also issued a notice urging banks to examine nonprofits’ donors, funding sources and ties to other organizations and foreign governments, warning that such arrangements can hide where money ends up and open the door to money laundering or terrorist financing. The notice identified three forms of abuse: sham charities diverting money to illicit activity, charity-related schemes that enrich their operators, and insiders embezzling from otherwise legitimate groups.
The guidance follows an April IRS move tightening reporting requirements for tax-exempt organizations. “Tax-exempt status is not immunity from scrutiny,” said Ken Kies, Treasury Assistant Secretary and acting IRS chief counsel.
Bessent announced the findings at a Minnesota news conference alongside FBI Director Kash Patel, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson. The announcement comes as prosecutors continue to win convictions in the Feeding Our Future scandal. This week, Salim Said was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted on 21 counts tied to a scheme that prosecutors said defrauded a federal child nutrition program of $49 million.
Reports late last year of allegedly fraudulent daycare operations, many run by Somali immigrants, prompted more federal scrutiny. The administration later sent immigration agents to Minneapolis to arrest and deport people in the country illegally, a deployment that was followed by confrontations and riots across the Twin Cities.
Bessent has also been involved in the Justice Department’s ongoing grand jury investigation into the nonprofit network tied to Neville Roy Singham. Treasury sources told Fox News Digital that Bessent met with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to discuss accounts Singham once held at the bank that were used to distribute money to nonprofits. A Fox News Digital investigation found that Singham, an American businessman now living in Shanghai, has directed $278 million into the network since selling his technology company for $785 million in 2017. Groups in the network regularly organize or join anti-ICE, anti-Israel and pro-Iran demonstrations. Singham has not been charged, and the Southern District of New York investigation is ongoing.
