Fraud Costing U.S. Government Hundreds of Billions a Year as Crime Rings Use Stolen Identities
June 4th, 2025Let me guess: We all need to be put into Palantir’s expanded version of Main Core, to deal with this.
Am I close?
Via: CBS:
Last year, the Government Accountability Office released a report estimating the federal government loses as much as $521 billion a year to fraud. But Miller and other fraud experts believe the number is higher.
Linda Miller: I believe the government is losing between $550 billion and about $750 billion a year. We’re coming up close to the $1 trillion amount– is lost, every year, to fraud.
Cecilia Vega: When most people think of government fraud, I imagine they’re thinking somebody is claiming disability benefits when they’re not actually eligible, somebody collecting food stamps when they’re not actually eligible. Are those the biggest offenders?
Linda Miller: Not at all, not by a long shot. What we’re really talking about is nation-state actors. We’re talking about organized crime rings. We’re talking about using vast amounts of stolen Americans’ identities to monetize them for, you know, criminal activity.
The problem exploded during the pandemic – when the government rushed trillions of dollars into the economy to help struggling Americans.
Applications for relief programs moved online, making it easier for people to access aid, but with few safeguards, scammers, hackers and organized crime rings also cashed in.
