$2.98 trillion since 2004: Paid out without proof, year after year

Federal agencies have reported $2.98 trillion in improper and unverifiable payments since fiscal 2004, by our count of the government's own dataset. Fiscal 2025 alone added $185.8B.

FraudBadPublic receipt
All reporting federal programs

Improper and unverifiable payments, FY2004–FY2025$2.98 trillion¹
Of that, FY2004–FY2024 (GAO: ≈$2.8T)$2.80 trillion¹
FY2025 alone$185.8B¹
Programs with error rates over 10%, FY202519¹
Overpayments flagged for recovery, FY2025$77.5B¹
Actually recovered, FY2025$47.8B¹
TANF's error rateNever reported²
Programs not measured at all████████████████

fraudbad.comNo taxation without receipts

What happened

Since the early 2000s, agencies have had to estimate how much they pay out wrongly or without the records to prove it. The government publishes every program's numbers in one dataset on PaymentAccuracy.gov.

We added them up. From fiscal 2004 through 2025 the total is $2.98 trillion. Through 2024 it's $2.80 trillion, matching GAO's published figure of about $2.8 trillion.

Why nobody caught it

The total only counts programs that report. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families has never been included; HHS says it lacks the authority to get the data.
In fiscal 2025, agencies flagged $77.5B in overpayments to claw back and recovered $47.8B.

How sure are we?

Paid without proof

Officially counted as paid in error or without the records to prove it was right. Some is fraud. Nobody has measured how much.

These are the government's own estimates; the totals are FraudBad's sums of the official dataset. Improper payments include errors and missing paperwork as well as fraud.

Sources

FY2025 improper payments dataset: every program's results, root causes, recoveries and compliance (FY2004–FY2025)PaymentAccuracy.gov (OMB and CFO Council); totals summed by FraudBad · Nov 9, 2026
GAO-25-108172: improper payments — about $2.8 trillion estimated since fiscal year 2003U.S. Government Accountability Office · Mar 11, 2025
GAO reports improper payments rose to an estimated $186 billion in fiscal year 2025U.S. Government Accountability Office · Apr 27, 2026

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