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Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent Holds a Fraud Task Force Press Conference in St. Cloud, MN

October 30, 2026 · The White House · 1:37:40

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What happened

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held a Fraud Task Force press conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota on Oct. 30, 2026, joined by FBI Director Kash Patel, CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, and Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald. Bessent framed the event as a whole-of-government effort led by Vice President Vance’s task force, which he said first convened in March, and reported Treasury’s own figures as he stated them: $175 million in payments that would have gone to deceased individuals returned over the past year, “do not pay” access expanded from 4% to 99% of federal programs, almost $190 million stopped and over $100 million returned to U.S. victims of overseas fraud, and an audit of approximately $9 billion in Treasury contracts ordered. For the administration as a whole, he stated that since January 2025 it has uncovered more than $260 billion in fraud, prevented $72 billion in taxpayer funds from going to illicit actors annually, and brought enforcement actions against nearly $60 billion.

On Minnesota specifically, Bessent said Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) had issued a geographic targeting order to trace criminal networks diverting funds overseas, and that FinCEN and its partners had supported the law-enforcement effort that led to 115 fraudsters arrested and charged, 75 convictions, and nearly 3,000 subpoenas across Minnesota, as he stated them. He announced two FinCEN actions that day — a notice to help financial institutions identify and report suspicious activity involving charities and nonprofits, and an alert on cross-border transactions originated by money services businesses, saying FinCEN identified over $8 billion in potentially suspicious foreign-agent-directed payments between 2021 and 2025. He also announced a single centralized whistleblower portal and said Treasury is seeding a $25 million fraud whistleblower incentive program under which information leading to a conviction or enforcement action may be eligible for a $30,000 reward, as he stated it.

Patel announced that FBI Minneapolis and its partners executed 17 search warrants in a single day, combined into a 26-count indictment, and arrested four alleged fraudsters, putting the intended fraud at over $41 million. On the Feeding Our Future investigation he stated that 81 subjects have been charged and 70 convicted, with a fraud value of over $1.5 billion. Oz put a face to the Minnesota cases with Charmaine Meadows, who he said was convicted by a federal jury earlier this month of stealing over $3.5 million from the now-defunct Minnesota Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services Program — a program he said grew from about $2.5 million in 2020 to over $100 million in 2024 before Minnesota shut it down. Oz also stated that roughly 30% of high-risk providers across 14 categories in Minnesota could not be revalidated, and that CMS signed a memorandum of understanding with Treasury earlier this month to follow fraud proceeds upstream. McDonald stated that five defendants were charged this week in Medicaid fraud schemes involving more than $48 million in intended loss, and that over roughly the past 115 days, 14 Minnesota fraud defendants have been sentenced to a combined 988 months in prison.

In questions from reporters, Bessent called Minnesota “ground zero” for fraud per capita, as he put it, declined to discuss ongoing investigations, and said the task force would continue uncovering more in the coming weeks and months. He closed by saying he had met with Vice President Vance that morning and that Vance was unable to attend.

Why it matters

Bessent is the Treasury’s lead voice on the Fraud, Waste & Corruption hub, and this is his on-the-ground report from Minnesota, the state the administration’s anti-fraud task force treats as its central case. The dated deliverables here are FinCEN’s two new reporting actions, the centralized whistleblower portal seeded with the $25 million incentive program, and the CMS–Treasury cooperation agreement Oz described — each a checkable step in the whole-of-government model the task force has announced since March.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: the $25 million whistleblower incentive program and centralized portal as announced by Secretary Bessent; the administration-wide fraud figures he stated (more than $260 billion uncovered, $72 billion prevented annually, enforcement actions against nearly $60 billion); the FinCEN finding of over $8 billion in potentially suspicious foreign-agent-directed payments for 2021–2025; and the Minnesota enforcement counts stated by Bessent, Patel, and McDonald — each as stated by the officials at the press conference, checkable against Treasury, FinCEN, FBI, and court records as they publish.

Sources: The White House, “Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent Holds a Fraud Task Force Press Conference in St. Cloud, MN,” The White House, Oct. 30, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by Secretary Bessent, Director Patel, Administrator Oz, Assistant Attorney General McDonald, and Chairman Ferguson at the press conference.