Any organization as vast and complex as the federal government is ripe for fraud. There are literally millions of people managing all the ways money flows into and out of the government, and amazingly, a lot is disbursed through things like QuickBooks accounts that can be edited after checks are cut. Embezzlers do get caught, nonetheless. These systems must have some kind of audit trail, because that is how a fraudster at the State Department got caught. Fox Business anchor Elizabeth McDonald broke that story on X on Sunday. //

She wrote 5 dozen checks to herself and 3 more to an individual with whom she had a personal relationship, but then changed the listed payee in the Quickbooks system to an actual State Department vendor. No one would have caught this without an audit.

There are more than 2,000 Quickbook accounts throughout the federal government that are ripe for a Doge audit. The GAO’s Fraudnet got 4,044 fraud allegations against thousands of federal workers in just 2023 alone at 50 agencies including the Pentagon, the DOJ and the Treasury Dept. //

Think on that for a moment; 2,000 QuickBooks accounts? From which low-level bureaucrats can just write checks? That seems inexcusably loose. But this report prompts the question: If the GAO knows that between $213 billion and $521 billion is being stolen annually by federal workers, if they are getting in excess of 4,000 allegations per year, why aren't we seeing more of the fraudsters getting caught? //

The federal apparatus is great at tracking down people who owe $48 in back taxes, but they seem to be a little too easy to defraud from within.