Treasury Report Exposes How Fentanyl Traffickers Exploit Financial System

The fentanyl trade—which claimed tens of thousands of American lives in 2024 alone—is a multibillion-dollar business supported by sophisticated money laundering schemes, a new report from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed Wednesday.

Bessent released the report amid President Donald Trump’s push to use tariffs as a weapon against foreign nations’ reputed abuses of their financial relationship with the United States.

The president previously declared a national emergency involving the Mexican fentanyl trade in order to levy tariffs against the country.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), a bureau of the Treasury, compiled the report, which focuses on Bank Secrecy Act reports, or BSAs, on transactions suspected of supporting the fentanyl trade—1,246 of them between January and December 2024 alone.

All told, those transactions add up to $1.4 billion.

FinCen indicates in the report that Mexico and China are the two top foreign players in the American fentanyl trade. 

Foreign actors facilitate the fentanyl trade by a variety of means. 

Chinese suppliers of chemicals needed to produce fentanyl, for example, use e-commerce to accept payment for their goods.

 Mexican drug cartels use “front companies, money mules, and U.S. intermediaries” to procure these chemicals, the report adds.

The report also reveals how much of the fentanyl trade occurs between dealer and seller. Fentanyl deals occur “primarily in cash and peer-to-peer … transfers,” it says. 

Some of those transactions were only discovered due to “drug-related euphemisms” in their payment memos, which were then flagged by the filer of a BSA report.

The report goes on to detail complex Chinese money laundering schemes, which often involve “electronics, such as cellular phones, and vaping/e-cigarette devices.”

On a more granular level, maps showing the origins of these transactions underscore the likelihood of cartel connections. 

The Mexican states of Jalisco and Sinaloa, which are hotbeds of cartel activity, are the top sources of Mexico-based fentanyl transactions, as are Mexican border towns.

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