Remarks from Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent at Event with Texas Bankers in Houston | U.S. Department of the Treasury
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Remarks from Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent at Event with Texas Bankers in Houston
June 12, 2026
Thank you for joining us. Today, I want to address the critical role that America's community banks play in protecting our financial system.
Across the country, community bankers serve as the first line of defense in our financial infrastructure. They know their customers, understand their local economies, and often discern emerging risks long before they appear in national statistics.
Every day, bankers help identify suspicious activity, detect fraud schemes, support law enforcement investigations, and prevent criminals from exploiting our financial system.
Economic security is national security.
Houston provides a uniquely important example.
President Trump has taken historic action to secure the southern border. Still, Texas remains on the front lines of the challenges created by years of unchecked illegal immigration under the Biden Administration. And Houston serves as a major economic and financial hub connected to communities across the state and around the world.
Criminal organizations and cartels continue to seek opportunities to exploit our financial system and harm law-abiding businesses and workers. That is why President Trump signed a historic Executive Order to restore integrity to America’s financial system.
The Executive Order directs Treasury and our regulatory partners to strengthen safeguards against fraud and abuse, improve the detection of illicit financial activity, and ensure that America's financial institutions are not used to facilitate unlawful conduct.
Last week, Treasury and FinCEN took an important step in support of that effort.
We issued guidance highlighting schemes involving unlawful employment, labor brokers, shell companies, payroll tax evasion, identity theft, and other forms of financial exploitation. The advisory provides specific indicators and red flags that can help institutions to identify suspicious activity associated with these schemes.
This is not an abstract issue.
In 2025 alone, financial institutions reported more than $2.5 billion in suspicious activity associated with payroll tax fraud schemes. These schemes hurt law-abiding businesses, depress wages, steal taxpayer dollars, facilitate identity theft, and create opportunities for transnational criminal organizations to generate and move illicit proceeds.
The advisory does not ask banks to become immigration officers. 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.
And that is where community banks play an indispensable role.
At Treasury, we follow the money. But Washington cannot identify every suspicious transaction, payroll scheme, or attempt to move illicit funds through the financial system.
You can.
For those in this room and throughout Texas, I want to be very direct: You are not simply providing financial services. You are helping protect the integrity of the American financial system and the security of the American people.
That is why Treasury is committed to giving you better tools to do that important work. Today, FinCEN is rolling out updated guidance that enables financial institutions to share information about fraud in real time, and in closer coordination with one another. This guidance supports the Administration’s broader effort, led by the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud and Vice President JD Vance, to strengthen our collective ability to detect, stop, and prevent illicit activity before it spreads through the financial system.
When you see something and say something, you are serving the public by helping keep Americans safe. 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.
So my message to community banks across Texas is simple: continue to lean in. Continue to build strong relationships with Treasury, FinCEN, and law enforcement. Invest in compliance programs and employee training. File suspicious activity reports. And continue sharing information that helps prevent and disrupt criminal activity.
Treasury is committed to being your partner in that mission. Our objective is not to burden community banks with unnecessary requirements, but to provide a regulatory framework that allows institutions to focus resources where the risks are greatest.
The good news is that many Texas bankers are already answering this call.
In a moment, you will hear directly from leaders who are doing this work every day. Their experiences demonstrate exactly the kind of partnership envisioned by President Trump's Executive Order and the leadership Treasury hopes to see replicated across the country.
I look forward to hearing from the bankers on the front lines who are helping to safeguard our financial system and expand opportunity for all Americans.
Thank you.
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