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Treasury Safeguards Verified Over $3,700,000,000,000 In Federal Payments, Preventing Fraud

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (Screenshot/Rumble/CSPAN)

The U.S. Treasury announced the successful implementation of fraud prevention programs across the Department in 2026 protecting a significant amount of taxpayer money.

On Monday, the Treasury Department confirmed it had screened over 1.1 billion federal payments totaling $3.7 trillion dollars and identified 13,500 fraudulent payments worth $175 million that would have gone to deceased individuals, according to its Tuesday press release.

“Treasury continues to transform how the federal government protects taxpayer dollars by using better data, stronger controls, and advanced technology to stop fraud and improper payments before money goes out the door,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the release. “In the past year alone, Treasury built and deployed new safeguards.”

“We are moving beyond ‘pay and chase’ and making prevention the federal government’s first line of defense,” Bessent added.

This crackdown on fraud payment prevention comes after the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced billions of dollars in suspected fraud in August, one month after the Department of Justice uncovering millions of dollars in fraud across the southern states in SNAP benefits as well, as the Daily Caller first reported.

To better prevent fraud, the Treasury added nine new data sources “Do Not Pay” program and initiated a new government-wide payment verification process, per a July press release from the department.

The Do Not Pay program uses a variety of data sources to assess different fraud risks including: death risk, debt risk, allowed status risk, identity and bank accounts, incarceration risk, organizational risk, and payments, according to the Treasury Department’s website. It also utilizes a Data Correction system to keep track of a variety of records: death, delinquent debt, disallowed entities, tax exempt status, incarceration, and organizational risk.

Through the Do Not Pay program, the government analyzed and screened 2.3 billion records through the Public Assistance Reporting Information System (PARIS), according to the department’s Monday press release.

The Treasury implemented these programs in coordination with President Donald Trump’s March 2025 Executive Order 14249, “Protecting America’s Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.”