The Trump administration’s anti-fraud Task Force has issued its first formal marching orders this week, laying out a four-part strategy to claw back billions lost each year to fraudsters draining federal programs, according to an internal memo obtained by The Daily Wire.
The memo, signed by Vice President JD Vance and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, outlines a plan built around increased prosecutions, stronger front-end payment controls, and aggressive targeting of high-spending, low-verification programs. The federal government currently loses an estimated $250 billion annually to fraud and recovers only about $10 billion of it.
“The widespread fraud has not been committed by isolated bad actors; large and powerful networks have furthered this fraud,” the memo states. “The American people have a right to know how the fraud problem has gotten so bad, and prosecutions will shed light on how this happened.”
The memo’s title is “Tackling Fraud Across Public Programs.” Its central argument is that the government’s longstanding “pay-and-chase” approach, sending money out and trying to recover it later, has failed. The task force says future policy must shift toward refusing payment when fraud risk is high rather than pursuing fraudsters after funds have already been disbursed.
“The government must establish fraud indicators by which the major payor agencies can detect fraud and deny payment,” the memo reads. “Major payor agencies must learn to refuse payment when the risk of fraud reaches unacceptable levels.”
The task force identifies six programs as primary targets:
Medicare and Medicaid, which together account for approximately $2 trillion in annual federal spending; the Department of Labor’s Unemployment Insurance program at $43.5 billion per year; the Department of Agriculture’s SNAP program at $101 billion per year; the Department of Health and Human Services’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families at $16 billion per year; the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental assistance and public housing programs at $64 billion per year; and Small Business Administration loans and assistance at $104 billion per year.
The memo points to research showing over one million suspicious Paycheck Protection Program loans and more than 2,000 suspicious durable medical equipment companies as examples of fraud at scale.
One of the task force’s first assignments is to audit the Biden administration’s handling of fraud prevention, including whether the previous administration “failed to use available tools to prevent fraud, and to what extent.” Members are directed to report back on anti-fraud measures currently underway and recommend new technologies, regulations, and staffing.
The memo acknowledges that litigation alone cannot solve the problem. “The federal government simply does not have the resources necessary to recover all of the money lost to fraud once it has been paid out. Many fraudsters are judgment proof and therefore could not pay back the money they stole even after a successful prosecution,” it states.
