The U.S. Department of the Treasury has reported significant progress in its efforts to combat fraud and improper payments, announcing that over $4 billion was prevented and recovered in fiscal year 2024. This marks a substantial increase from the $652.7 million reported in the previous fiscal year. The advancements are attributed to enhanced processes employed by the Treasury’s Office of Payment Integrity (OPI), part of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
Key measures contributing to this success include expanding risk-based screening, which led to $500 million in prevention, and prioritizing high-risk transactions resulting in $2.5 billion being safeguarded. Additionally, machine learning AI expedited the identification of Treasury check fraud, enabling a recovery of $1 billion. Efficiencies implemented in payment processing schedules further prevented $180 million in losses.
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo emphasized their commitment: “Treasury takes seriously our responsibility to serve as effective stewards of taxpayer money. Helping ensure that agencies pay the right person, in the right amount, at the right time is central to our efforts.” He noted that these achievements reflect significant progress made over the past year.
Treasury is also working on building partnerships with new and high-risk programs to enhance access to its payment integrity solutions. An example is a data-sharing partnership established with the Department of Labor in May 2024 aimed at providing state unemployment agencies with access to critical data sources through an Unemployment Insurance Integrity Data Hub.
As a central disbursing agency for federal payments, Treasury handles approximately 1.4 billion payments annually valued at over $6.9 trillion dollars. With financial sector fraud on an upward trend and online payment fraud projected to exceed $362 billion by 2028, Treasury aims to leverage data and emerging technologies proactively.
