Overview
- PRAC told a House Oversight panel its Fraud Prevention Engine, trained on roughly five million SBA EIDL applications, can analyze about 20,000 applications per second.
- Executive director Ken Dieffenbach said the system could have flagged potentially tens of billions of dollars for further scrutiny before disbursement, compared with just over $500 million recovered so far.
- After last summer’s reconciliation law extended PRAC’s mandate to 2034 with $88 million in funding, the committee has begun working with Inspectors General to apply the engine to programs funded under that law.
- Treasury’s Renata Miskell said the Do Not Pay service remains underutilized and lacks authority to query key federal databases needed to verify identity, financial status and death records.
- GAO chief scientist Sterling Thomas cited data silos and outdated networks as obstacles and suggested Congress consider Privacy Act changes to enable targeted data sharing for fraud investigations, while lawmakers like Rep. Pete Sessions urged finding a permanent home for PRAC’s analytics.