FraudBadNo taxation without receipts

Method

How we judge

No invented numbers. No guesses dressed up as facts. Every figure on this site comes from an auditor, an inspector general, a prosecutor, a court or the agency that paid the money — and every page says which.

How a case makes the list

A case is listed when an official body has put a dollar figure on fraud, likely fraud, or payments nobody can prove were right, and the amount runs to hundreds of millions of dollars or more. That body can be the Government Accountability Office, an inspector general, a state auditor or comptroller, the Justice Department, a court, or the agency itself.

News reports are used to show what officials said and when. Wherever we could, we link to the official document itself.

Hard fraud and soft fraud

Hard fraud is theft and deception: schemes, crimes, and official estimates of fraud. Soft fraud is negligence: money paid without proof, paid too much, paid twice, lost track of, or never collected. Nobody has to break a law for soft fraud to happen, and nobody gets charged — which is why it's bigger. Here's exactly how we search for it.

How sure are we?

Every case carries one label. It tells you what kind of number you're looking at.

Confirmed

Proven in court, admitted in a guilty plea, or confirmed by the agency that paid it.

Charged

Prosecutors filed charges. These are accusations; everyone charged is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Settled

Money was paid to settle the government's claims, without an admission of wrongdoing.

Estimated

An auditor, inspector general or the agency itself estimated the fraud. It's a measured range, not a list of names.

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.

Payments frozen

Officials stopped payment over suspected fraud. No one has been found guilty.

Can't be checked

The books or the spending can't be verified, so fraud can't be ruled in or out.

Over budget

Officially measured cost growth or delay beyond what was promised.

Fix ignored

A watchdog found the waste and the fix. The fix hasn't been made.

Measured

FraudBad counted it ourselves from official government data. The page shows the query and links to the data.

Never collected

Money the government is owed and hasn't collected, by its own count.

Fraud is not the same as an improper payment

An improper payment is money paid in the wrong amount, to the wrong person, or without the records to prove it was right. Some improper payments are fraud. Many are mistakes. A large share are payments where the paperwork simply isn't there.

That last kind is the reason this site exists. When a payment has no receipt, nobody can tell honest error from theft. The government's own estimate of fraud — $233 billion to $521 billion a year — is bigger than its yearly improper-payment total, because most fraud is never caught.

What we won't do

We won't name people who haven't been charged. We won't call a charge a conviction. We won't claim the RECEIPTS Act covers programs it doesn't: as drafted, it starts with federal orders over $25,000 placed through GSA's schedules.

Corrections

Found a number that's wrong or out of date? Send us the source. We fix errors and note the date.

Every source on this site

  3. GAO-26-108694: improper payments government-wide, FY2025U.S. Government Accountability Office · Apr 2026
  5. Report 23-09: COVID-19 pandemic EIDL and PPP loan fraud landscapeSBA Office of Inspector General · Jun 27, 2023
  6. GAO-26-107456: lessons from the Employee Retention CreditU.S. Government Accountability Office · Feb 10, 2026
  12. New data suggests Medicare Advantage overpayments of $1.3 trillion over the next decadeCommittee for a Responsible Federal Budget · Jan 23, 2026 (updated Mar 5, 2026)
  14. Fiscal year 2025 improper payments fact sheetCenters for Medicare & Medicaid Services · Jan 15, 2026
  15. USDA announces FY2025 state payment error rates in SNAPUSDA Food and Nutrition Service · Jun 24, 2026
  18. JCT projects tax expenditures will be $2.3T in 2026Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget · Feb 9, 2026
  30. Washington unemployment fraud might be up to $650 millionThe Daily Herald (Everett) · Jun 4, 2020
  36. 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
  40. IR-2024-262: IRS releases 2022 tax gap projectionsInternal Revenue Service · Oct 10, 2024
  41. GAO-26-108457: Weapon systems annual assessmentU.S. Government Accountability Office · Jul 2026
  45. GAO-25-107795: agencies need to continue addressing critical legacy systemsU.S. Government Accountability Office · Jul 17, 2025
  50. Agencies & programs: improper payment rates, FY2025PaymentAccuracy.gov · accessed Nov 9, 2026
  51. U.S. Government Receivables and Debt Collection Activities of Federal Agencies, FY2024 report to CongressU.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service · FY2024 report
  53. Audit 072301: processing Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance overpaymentsSocial Security Administration Office of the Inspector General · Sep 30, 2025
  59. CHSRA issues draft 2026 business planRailway Age · 2026 (on the Feb 28, 2026 draft)
  60. Cost of Honolulu rail line may be climbing againHonolulu Civil Beat · Aug 5, 2026
  64. Monthly Treasury Statement, fiscal year 2026 year-to-date (Table 1)U.S. Department of the Treasury · Sep 30, 2026
  67. Following the Money 2018U.S. PIRG Education Fund · 2018
  70. DNI releases appropriated budget figure for 2025 National Intelligence ProgramOffice of the Director of National Intelligence · Oct 31, 2025
  71. DoD releases Military Intelligence Program appropriated top line for FY2025U.S. Department of Defense (via GlobalSecurity.org) · Nov 3, 2025
  72. DODIG-2025-009: audit of the reasonableness of C-17 spare parts pricesDoD Office of Inspector General · Oct 29, 2024

America.co · The RECEIPTS Act

Want to stop it?Sign the Receipts Act.

Public money should come with a receipt anyone can check. The RECEIPTS Act starts with one rule for federal purchases over $25,000 from GSA's buying catalog: publish the price paid next to what other agencies paid for the same thing.

Sign the Receipts Act ↗

A citizen-authored working draft hosted on America.co. It has not been introduced in Congress.