The Trump administration is arming the nation’s local banks with sweeping new powers to share customer surveillance video and cyber data to hunt down cartel financiers and illegal immigration fraud rings, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday.
The move comes as payroll tax fraud schemes accounted for a staggering $2.5 billion in suspicious banking activity in 2025, he told a group of bankers in Houston.
Bessent tied the massive financial exploitation directly to the border crisis, blaming years of “unchecked illegal immigration under the Biden administration” that have allowed criminal gangs to move dirty money through the US financial system.
The crackdown builds on a recent Treasury policy advisory urging banks to report suspicious activity to the authorities.
Banks can now swap video surveillance footage and cyber data, such as IP addresses, among one another, Bessent said. The idea is that collaborating on suspicious cases will empower them to bring cases to the feds.
Treasury highlighted specific fraud indicators such as instances when an account adds new pay recipients, then transfers massive sums to them. Other examples include login activity from geographically distant places or multiple accounts using similar identifying information.
The data-sharing powers are based on the Patriot Act — Section 314(b), specifically — according to Bessent.
“Americans lose hundreds of billions of dollars to fraud each year,” he told a group of Houston bankers.
“At Treasury, we follow the money, and we know financial institutions are often the first to see suspicious activity in real time. They need the tools to act quickly and share information that can help stop fraud before it spreads.”
Last week, Treasury’s elite Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, issued an advisory targeting the underground economy that fuels the border crisis.
The document urged banks to take initial steps to crack down on illegal immigrant labor by reporting specific “red flags,” as The Post reported.
The guidance highlighted schemes involving unlawful employment, shady labor brokers, shell companies and rampant identity theft.
Those rackets hurt law-abiding businesses, depress US wages, steal taxpayer dollars, and fund transnational criminal organizations, according to Treasury.
The banking industry aggressively lobbied for months to stop the White House from issuing an executive order that would have made collecting customers’ citizenship status mandatory, arguing it would be expensive and require vast amounts of paperwork.
A Treasury insider said the crackdown was not about “blanket debanking of broad segments of the population.”
Bessent stressed Friday that Washington isn’t deputizing bank tellers to patrol the border.
“The advisory does not ask banks to become immigration officers,” he told the gathering for Texas bank bosses. “It asks banks to do what they do best: know their customers, identify risk, recognize suspicious patterns, and report illicit activity when they see it.”
The one-two punch of last week’s illegal immigrant labor advisory and Friday’s new video-sharing powers are part of a “whole-of-government” crackdown ordered by President Trump.
The effort, aimed at restoring integrity to the US financial system, is being spearheaded by Vice President JD Vance’s White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.
Washington can’t identify every illicit payroll scheme or cartel wire transfer on its own, Bessent said, noting that local bankers often spot emerging risks long before they hit national statistics.
“When you see something and say something, you are serving the public by helping keep Americans safe,” he said. “The information in your purview can help stop a cartel financier, disrupt a money laundering network, uncover labor exploitation, or protect taxpayers from fraud.
“That is real national-security work,” the treasury secretary added.
Since banks have never collected any information about their customers’ citizenship or immigration status, there are no reliable public figures on how much risk such customers pose to the financial system.
While not legally binding, ignoring FinCEN advisories can be highly risky for a bank’s regulatory standing, triggering reputation-shredding probes and penalties.
Treasury hit New York-based investment bank Canaccord Genuity with a record $80 million civil fine in March for failing to monitor suspicious trading.
The new powers mark the latest strike in Trump’s immigration offensive.
He declared a national emergency at the southern border on day one of his second term and ordered agencies to block work permits for unauthorized immigrants. FinCEN issued an alert in November on cross-border money transfers tied to illegal immigration.
