The federal government loses a staggering amount of money every year to fraud, waste, and improper payments. The US Treasury is trying to fix that, and the early numbers suggest the effort is working better than almost anyone expected.
In fiscal year 2024, Treasury recovered and prevented more than $4 billion in fraudulent or improper disbursements. That figure represents a roughly sixfold jump from fiscal year 2023, when the comparable number was $652.7 million.
How the money was found
The $4 billion recovery did not come from one silver-bullet fix. It came from several layered interventions hitting at once.
Risk-based screening expansions contributed $500 million of that total. Prioritizing high-risk transactions before they cleared added another $2.5 billion. Machine-learning AI flagged roughly $1 billion in suspect payments. And processing efficiency improvements recovered $180 million more.
