Sponsors (2)
The bill significantly strengthens tools, penalties, and prosecutorial reach to combat counterfeiting, bulk cash smuggling, and illicit cross‑border transfers — improving national security and reducing crime — but does so at the cost of broader surveillance and criminal exposure for ordinary users and informal remittance channels, plus higher compliance and government costs that may disproportionately affect immigrants, the unbanked, and small operators.
Many Americans (taxpayers and the public) will be better protected because federal law enforcement gains substantially broader and clearer tools (wiretap predicates, new money‑laundering predicates, aggregation rules, cross‑references to §1960, and cross‑border reporting authority) to detect and prosecute illicit finance, counterfeiting, and cross‑border tax‑related transfers.
People and communities may become safer because the bill increases criminal penalties and sentencing ranges for serious offenses like bulk cash smuggling and counterfeiting, creating stronger deterrence against organized criminal networks that fund other crimes.
Banks, insured depository institutions, and regulators gain clearer rules and statutory guidance (e.g., bright‑line reporting for bearer instruments, factors for aggregating related transactions, clearer treatment of unlicensed MSBs), reducing legal uncertainty and helping institutions identify and avoid illicit activity.
Individuals (including ordinary travelers, immigrants, and customers) face increased privacy and surveillance risks because the bill expands wiretap predicates and explicitly exempts authorized law‑enforcement/intelligence activities from certain limits, enabling broader electronic surveillance tied to financial investigations.
Everyday users, immigrants, small or informal money‑transmission operators (hawalas, community money‑changers, nonprofit helpers) and some small businesses face materially greater criminal exposure because the bill broadens what counts as criminal money transmission (aggregation of transactions, inclusion of §1960, tax‑linked predicates, treatment of informal transfers and bearer instruments).
Banks, money services businesses, and customers will likely incur higher compliance, reporting, and operational costs (more paperwork, monitoring of aggregated/related transactions, border reporting of bearer instruments), which can raise fees and slow remittance flows.
Based on analysis of 26 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens counterfeiting and AML law, modernizes the illegal money‑transmitting offense into a covered money services business crime, raises penalties for bulk cash smuggling, and mandates a Treasury remittances threat analysis and strategy.
Introduced February 5, 2026 by Charles Ernest Grassley · Last progress February 5, 2026
Makes a wide set of changes to federal criminal and anti‑money‑laundering law: it creates and stiffens counterfeiting offenses, broadens and modernizes the illegal money‑transmitting/“money services” business offense, increases penalties for bulk cash smuggling, and expands prosecutorial tools for money‑laundering cases. It also requires a Treasury remittances threat analysis and recurring strategy, adds a reporting presumption for blank bearer instruments, updates wiretap predicates, and makes targeted technical changes to Secret Service/danger‑pay law. The bill affects financial services businesses (including informal remittance channels), banks, people who send or receive remittances, and federal law enforcement by increasing compliance obligations, expanding criminal liability, adding investigative authorities, and creating new reporting presumptions and strategic planning requirements for remittances and illicit finance threats.