STATEMENT: TAF Coalition President on New GAO Fraud Report
Contact: James M. King, j[email protected]
Washington, DC – Today, the Government Accountability Office released a new report on Fraud Risk Management, estimating the federal government loses $233-$521 billion annually to fraud.
In response, The Anti-Fraud Coalition President & CEO Jacklyn DeMar released the following statement:
“Today’s GAO report confirms what we long suspected: hundreds of billions of dollars are being lost to fraud, and the government is recovering only a fraction of the taxpayer funds being lost. While government spending has increased exponentially, recoveries under the False Claims Act have remained flat. This first-of-its-kind estimate should redouble efforts to fight fraud by empowering whistleblowers and bolstering enforcement programs.”
For three years now, TAF Coalition has put out monthly series called “Fraud By The Numbers” examining on the government money being lost to fraud in industries like pharmaceutical drugs, grants, private insurance, and more. In the 2022 conclusion, we wrote:
First, so long as the government awards billions of dollars in contracts and our markets move trillions of dollars in financial transactions, opportunistic fraudsters seeking ill-gotten gains will target them. Second, whistleblowers are the most powerful tool we have to expose these fraudsters.
While this is the first analysis of its kind from the GAO, TAF Coalition looks forward to the Office continuing these estimates to fully expose how many government dollars are lost to fraud.
For more information on this topic, please contact James King, Director of Communications & Digital at [email protected].
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