WASHINGTON — Since the White House formed a task force in March intended to combat fraud, top administration officials have repeatedly heralded its work, pointing to huge amounts of recovered payments and graft stopped in its tracks.
“We found $250 billion of fraud just since the president made me the fraud czar,” Vice President JD Vance, who leads the task force, said in a speech this month at the Republican midterm convention.
Yet some of the numbers Vance and his task force have promoted are overstated or lack specificity, and rely on temporary pauses in funding as well as cases and actions that long predated President Donald Trump’s second term, according to a New York Times analysis of documents released by the administration. The task force also appears to be relying on claims of fraud that could not be verified or leaning on allegations of fraud that are being prematurely…
PAYROLL & HR CONTROLS (PREVENTING “GHOST” SCHEMES)
Payroll fraud is often the hardest to detect because it “looks” like a normal business expense.
- Segregation of Duties (SoD): The person who adds new employees to the system must not be the same person who approves the monthly pay run.
- Mandatory Vacation Policy: Require all financial and HR staff to take 5–10 consecutive days of leave annually. Fraud often surfaces when the perpetrator isn’t there to “hide” the trail.
- Ghost Employee Audit: Perform a quarterly “Headcount Reconciliation” where managers must physically verify every name on their payroll list exists.
- Self-Pay Blocking: Ensure the payroll software has a hard-coded block preventing administrators from editing their own salary or bank details.