House Oversight Panel Pushes Pre‑Payment Fraud Tools After Minnesota Scandal Hearing

Witnesses identified permanent PRAC analytics alongside expanded Treasury data access as keys to stopping high‑risk payments before disbursement.

Overview

The Government Operations Subcommittee held a January 13 hearing on detecting and preventing fraud in federal programs before funds are paid out.
Chairman Pete Sessions said he will introduce legislation in the coming weeks to give PRAC a permanent, government‑wide role in fraud detection.
PRAC officials detailed analytics that can spot cross‑program patterns such as linked IP addresses and out‑of‑bounds activity to trigger payment reviews.
Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service testified it cannot verify Tax or Social Security identifiers against authoritative federal databases and that states underuse the Do Not Pay service.
GAO described how machine learning flags anomalous behaviors for investigators and has estimated annual federal fraud losses at $231 billion to $521 billion.