No More Welfare Cash Wired Overseas to Somalia Fraud Rings [WATCH]

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a new initiative aimed at combating money laundering and the overseas transfer of illegally obtained funds during an exchange with Laura Ingraham, saying the Trump administration is moving to aggressively track and shut down suspicious financial activity involving money service businesses.

Bessent said the administration is responding to what he described as widespread abuse of American financial systems, particularly involving funds wired out of the country to destinations including the Middle East and Somalia.

“Yeah, Laura, thank you for having me. And look, this is an outrage. President Trump is outraged. I’m outraged. The whole administration is outraged,” Bessent said.

“And we are here to follow the money, because that’s what Treasury does.”

Bessent said the Treasury Department has a long history of using financial tracking tools to disrupt criminal networks and is now applying those same methods to what he described as Somali fraud operations.

“We have done that for years. We did it with the mafia. We have done it with the cartels, and now we are going to do it the with these Somali fraudsters,” he said.

He said the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will be central to the effort and that action is imminent.

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“And Treasury has something called fence in Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and we are coming in, and we’re coming in tomorrow,” Bessent said.

Bessent announced that the department is opening multiple investigations into money service businesses suspected of wiring stolen funds overseas.

“We are announcing that four investigations into money service businesses that we believe may have wired money out of the country, a lot of the ill gotten, stolen money, over to the Middle East, over to Somalia,” he said. “We’ll see where that’s going.”

In addition to the investigations, Bessent said Treasury will implement a geographical targeting order affecting specific counties, along with enhanced monitoring of financial transactions.

“So we’re announcing investigations into for those money service businesses. We are going to put in what we call a geographical the targeting order,” he said.

Bessent explained that the administration is lowering the reporting threshold for suspicious wire transfers and increasing scrutiny in targeted areas.

“So there’s something called suspicious activity report if a certain amount of money gets wired. So we’re lowering that to 3000 and we’re also targeting the two counties here, and we’re going to do enhanced surveillance,” he said.

Bessent also announced a new requirement affecting individuals who send money through money service businesses, particularly those receiving government assistance.

“And from now on, anyone who wires money out from one of these money service businesses has to check a box saying whether they are on public assistance,” he said.

He said the administration is moving to restrict overseas wire transfers by individuals receiving public benefits.

“And if you are on public assistance, we are going to start pushing that you cannot wire money out of the country,” Bessent said.

Ingraham raised concerns about compliance with the new requirement and asked about the consequences of false statements.

“What if they lie and they don’t tell us? that’s a crime, lying on a federal form,” Ingraham said.

Bessent responded by saying Treasury intends to pursue enforcement and follow-up actions.

“We’re going to follow it up, and we are going to push that you can no longer do that,” he said.

“The American people, our generosity has been taken advantage of.”

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