Cash Is Criminal: New Trump Admin Law Triggers An IRS Report For Withdrawing $200 From A Bank From Select Communities To Combat Fraud And Illegal Immigrants
“The Treasury remains focused on leveraging all our available tools and authorities to better identify and counter these criminal activities," Scott Bessent said.
The Trump administration quietly enacted a new law on select portions of the United States that could drastically affect cash usage, under the guise of clamping down on fraud and illicit activity.
On Trump’s first day in office, the President signed an executive order - Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists. “FTO designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism and are an effective means of curtailing support for terrorist activities and pressuring groups to get out of the terrorism business,” the State Department says on its website.
Then on March 11th, the Treasury’s subsidiary Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that it would be cracking down on cash transactions in certain parts of the U.S., triggering a report each time a meager $200 is transacted.
Per the order in the Federal Register:
FinCEN is issuing notice of a Geographic Targeting Order, requiring certain money services businesses along the southwest border of the United States to report and retain records of transactions in currency of more than $200 but not more than $10,000, and to verify the identity of persons presenting such transactions.
For purposes of this Order, a “Covered Transaction” means each deposit, withdrawal, exchange of currency or other payment or transfer, by, through, or to the Covered Business which involves a transaction in currency, of more than $200 but not more than $10,000.
Furthermore, according to FinCEN’s press release:
Combatting drug cartels and stopping the flow of deadly drugs into the United States is one of the Administration’s highest priorities. In January, President Donald J. Trump issued an Executive Order creating a process by which certain cartels and other organizations would be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and/or Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs).
Accordingly, in February, the U.S. Departments of the Treasury and State designated eight organizations, including six major Mexico-based drug cartels, as FTOs and SDGTs. These designations will allow the United States to take further steps to deny individuals and entities associated with these groups access to the U.S. financial system.
“Today’s issuance of this GTO underscores our deep concern with the significant risk to the U.S. financial system of the cartels, drug traffickers, and other criminal actors along the Southwest border,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “As part of a whole-of-government approach to combatting the threat, Treasury remains focused on leveraging all our available tools and authorities to better identify and counter these criminal activities.”
44 counties were affected by the initial order in California and Texas.
Then on September 8th, the directive was updated and extended until March 6th this year, by the transaction threshold was raised to $1,000 instead, and a few new counties in Arizona were added.
FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki in September: “FinCEN is deeply focused on combatting cartels, drug traffickers, and other criminal actors along the southwest border that present significant risks to both the U.S. financial system and to public health. The reports generated by this Geographic Targeting Order will continue to help law enforcement investigate powerful illicit networks operating along the southwest border and beyond.”
Withdrawing money $10,000 or more already triggers a report from the bank to the IRS, even if the depositors have done nothing wrong. But breaking that $10,000 into smaller transactions will also trigger a report and up the odds of government probing. According to the Motely Fool:
You might be tempted to take out multiple smaller withdrawals (like $5,000 today and another $5,000 tomorrow) to avoid triggering the reporting threshold.
Don’t. Do. That.
This move is called structuring, and it’s considered a federal offense. Even if your intentions are innocent, it can be interpreted as deliberately trying to avoid financial reporting rules.
Seriously, trying to skirt the rules or be sneaky will likely backfire. It’s best to just make one clean withdrawal and be upfront about it.
Policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, Nicholas Anthony, wrote at the time: “More than one million Americans are about to face a new level of financial surveillance. Financial surveillance in the United States has long needed reform, but this move is in the wrong direction.”
Reason Magazine added:
Anthony says rather than lowering the threshold, the $10,000 baseline is overdue to be raised.
The federal government first began requiring banks to log and report all cash transactions of $10,000 or more in 1952. The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 established CTRs as we know them today, and Treasury regulations enacted in 1972 set the threshold at $10,000.
As Anthony points out, the $10,000 threshold has remained since that time. If it had been raised even just to keep up with inflation, the current minimum for filing a CTR would be anywhere between $80,000 and $180,000, depending on whether you start from the pre-CTR rules in 1952 or the adoption of the current rules two decades later.
Instead, the CTR minimum has remained the same since it was first enacted, even as the power of the dollar has declined: $10,000 today is equivalent to $1,372 in 1972—a fraction of what the regulation required.
For this reason, the number of CTRs has ballooned far past the point that any bureaucracy could feasibly find it useful. Last year, FinCEN reported that for FY 2023, businesses and financial institutions filed around 20.8 million CTRs—an average of 57,000 per day.
“Inflation may have contributed to the increase in volume of CTRs filed, which has increased by about 62 percent since fiscal year 2002,” according to a December 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office. “The inflation-adjusted threshold in 2023 would have been about $72,880. Using an inflation-adjusted threshold would have reduced the number of CTRs filed by at least 90 percent annually since 2014.”
Since then, the Trump administration and the Treasury have also announced that they will no longer be minting any new pennies, professing to cut government expenditures, though the deficit on penny production (in relative terms) is very small. The Federal Reserve has pointed out that this move is a pathway to digital currencies and a cashless society.
Moreover, while Elon Musk was still on contract with the administration and oversaw the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration announced the elimination of cash and check payments from the Treasury to modernize payment systems, while creating a pretext for tokenized assets, CBDCs and stablecoins.
Though the federal government is cracking down on cash transactions, New York state introduced a law this year that forces businesses to not discriminate against cash users, though with some caveats.
According to Holland & Knight,
With the signing of New York Senate Bill S4153A by Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York state has enacted a sweeping requirement for “retail establishments” and “food stores” to accept cash payments for in-person transactions. The law, effective 120 days from signing (anticipated March 20, 2026), also prohibits charging cash-paying customers more than those using other payment methods.
Mandatory Cash Acceptance: All covered businesses must accept cash for in-person transactions, ensuring that consumers are not excluded from commerce due to payment method restrictions.
Price Parity: The law prohibits charging higher prices to customers who pay with cash, including banning rounding practices that would result in cash users paying more than those using other payment methods.
Exceptions: Businesses are not required to accept cash for bills over $20 or transactions conducted by telephone, mail or internet unless payment occurs on-premises. Note that provision of “reverse ATMs” that convert cash to a prepaid card constitutes compliance with the law, as long as the required deposit is $1 or less, no fees are charged on the card, and the funds never expire.
Missing Exceptions: Notably, the law does not explicitly exclude vending machines, parking facilities, live sporting events or rentals of consumer goods, which sets it apart from similar statutes in other jurisdictions. Because on-premises internet transactions are covered by the law, the treatment of bill payment and financial services kiosks under the law is ambiguous.
No Private Right of Action: As is the case with the New York City cash acceptance law, there is no private right of action to enforce compliance.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Ecclesiastes 5:8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.
Gotta stop that “fraud” and “illicit activity” committed by the plebs, but when the banks themselves launder and steal billions, perfectly fine.
This is obviously another subtle attack on cash as the administration continues to pave the way for tokenization, digital ID wallets: it is social credit score training.
Reason also pointed out how the Biden administration ushered in the scheme that forces cash-app and vendor transactions to be reported if the transaction is $600 or more. Now it has become for anything that the IRS wants to see that on your tax report.
The Trump administration is now starting to do this in select counties that allegedly have a lot of illegal gang and crime activity near the southern border, sure; but what happens when this inevitably spreads across the nation?
Psalm 15:5 He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.
There is a reason why the FDIC and IRS are constantly belly-aching about being “unbanked.” They want control over your money and your spending habits, and they want their dirty usury revenues.
This is all the more reason to be your own bank, to hold your money under your mattress or personal safe, put the money into tangible, physical assets.
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Maybe we the people need start asking our politicians where the $38 Trillion of debt went.
It's amazing to me that we call these parasites and predators law and order, when really they are the terrorists against the common people.