How Fraudsters Are Bilking the Government Out of Billions of Dollars

Takeaways

There is a lot of fraud in areas where the government has little knowledge of what’s going on – mainly healthcare, transportation, defense.
The real money is in healthcare & defense. Both are massive honeypots for fraud, because cost & need is so hard to quantify – like, we spend more money just on dialysis than we do on the entire Environmental Protection Agency.
There is very little fraud where the government knows exactly what is going on – mainly Social Security, EBT, WIC, etc. Money in, money out – pretty straightforward.
There is a lot of money that can be recouped. And this issue should excite every taxpayer.
And ROI to the citizens is not only in money recovered, but also in deterrence. Simply having an auditor on staff deters huge amounts of fraud.
The government generally knows how to fix the problem. It’s mostly an investment problem that has to be funded by Congress. Inspector General offices and the Department of Justice are severely understaffed, given their ROI to the taxpayer. Many have multi-million dollar cases waiting to be investigated…it’s just that they have like, two lawyers. Also, starting pay for a government Data Analyst is ~$70K. That pay does not get top talent.
Most taxpayers do not realize how small Federal agencies are by headcount. Nearly all the money goes to programs, so Congress has allocated very few people to actually look after the money, who are almost always an excellen t investment.