Bessent turns up heat on sprawling Minnesota fraud schemes as Treasury personnel deploy on 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. 

"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, 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. 

"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.