A new report describes in detail how the federal government ignores billions of dollars in fraud related to identity theft every year, as outdated systems leave government agencies and Americans and vulnerable to fraudsters.
The Socure report, a company that sells identity verification services, found that fraudsters were using stolen identities to deceive government agencies from billions, and Bilk Americans would receive benefits to which they were eligible for. The problem is so huge, according to the report that fake or fraudulent claims originating in crimes based mainly abroad make up between 2 percent to 12 percent of all applications for US government services.
The government estimates that federal agencies annually lose about $ 500 billion for fraudulent claims. The Socure report shows that the number can be almost twice as high.
For comparison, this is more than 10 times the bigger than the USAID annual budget, the center of American foreign aid and the soft power, which is now distorted by the Elon Musk Doge campaign and is due to a processing of the State Department.
First reported by NBC News, the report continued to establish that the lack of federal identity test systems had a cascading effect, as fraudsters often target private organizations with information obtained incorrectly through government agencies.
“There is a real need for fraud prevention solutions that use simple consortium data that covers commercial and government programs,” it said.
The report cites major issues with identity verification efforts: Callers who contact agencies have often had access to information, providing information that could be obtained in itself, such as the social security number and answering security questions. Red flags, such as the social security number that does not coincide with the date of birth of the applicant, applications submitted by international IP addresses, or telephone numbers with codes of the area that do not match the place of residence of a person are often ignored.
“Today in many agencies, if someone calls a call center and says I’m locked with my account, many of them will allow them to access their account, saying,” Hey, we will allow you to change your name and password here, “Cocure Vice President Jordan Buris told NBC News. “They will probably ask them something about the effect of ‘hey, can you tell me your name? Can you tell me a social number? Can you answer this question about a car you may have had once?”
An international fraud ring, described as “complicated” by Socure’s analysis, uses stolen identities to launch 60 fraudulent claims in “multiple” agencies during a one -month period last fall.
This is also a bilateral problem: according to Socure’s findings, fraud to government agencies have jumped during the Covid pandemic, as the federal government has distributed the assistance of help, check millions of Americans, and unidentified borrowing programs to support workers during locking. The numbers never recovered when these programs were over.
But this is not part of the “waste, fraud and abuse” that the Elon Musk Elon or the Republican Congress’s efforts turn through federal funds and efforts to create a budget bill that can cross the Chamber and the Senate. Republicans in Congress are hoping to find nearly $ 900 billion savings to finance the renewal of Trump’s tax renewal for 2017, but they do so by creating Medicaid work requirements that Democrats say is simply a layer of bureaucracy aimed at exposing people from the program. The republican plan also calls for a reduction in food stamps and other changes to Medicaid aimed at reducing the weight for the federal government.
Elon Musk’s efforts have largely focused on the reduction of foreign aid programs and state subsidies (Getty Images)
The Government Reporting Service (GAO) estimates that Medicaid and Medicare together make more than $ 100 billion in incorrect payments each year. The GOP budget plan includes changes to the eligibility requirements that make checks more common, but there is no organized impetus for more powerful electronic inspection practices.
Meanwhile, the dog is largely dispersed after taking the USAID ax and most accounts calls for large -scale abbreviations of staff federal lists, not changes to programs to improve efficiency or even effort to identify fraud. A website last updated on Sunday, managed by Musk, shows that his team is taking credit for $ 170 billion for supposed savings, although this number is highly contested.
Elon Musk is expected to take a public step back from his role in the coming days, while his team looks largely viewed government programs as deceptive and wasteful design rather than undermined by criminal groups.