A retired inspector general told a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday that criminals can buy a stolen identity for less than the price of a fast-food meal, then use free online tutorials and artificial intelligence to file fraudulent benefit claims from anywhere on the planet. The warning, delivered by nearly three-decade anti-fraud veteran Bob Westbrooks, landed as lawmakers ramp up scrutiny of staggering losses in unemployment, Medicaid, and food-assistance programs.
The numbers behind the testimony are blunt. Federal watchdogs have estimated that more than $100 billion in pandemic-era unemployment benefits alone may have been lost to fraud. And that figure covers only one slice of the problem. The Small Business Administration’s inspector general has separately estimated that more than $200 billion may have been stolen from two other COVID relief programs, the Paycheck Protection Program and the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, with at least 17 percent of all funds in those programs going to potentially fraudulent actors.
Put together, the picture is one of a federal benefits system that bled hundreds of billions of dollars while the bureaucracies charged with safeguarding that money struggled to keep up. Westbrooks told Congress that the internet itself has become a fraud enabler on an industrial scale.
Westbrooks did not mince words. As Fox News Digital reported, the retired inspector general laid out a step-by-step description of how modern benefit fraud works:
“Offenders can find free tutorials online, purchase stolen identities for the price of a Happy Meal, and file claims from anywhere in the world. With automation tools, they can even submit multiple claims across multiple states.”
That single passage captures the core failure. The barriers to committing fraud have collapsed. A would-be thief no longer needs insider access, forged paperwork, or a local address. A laptop, a cheap stolen Social Security number, and a YouTube-style walkthrough will do.
Westbrooks went further, warning lawmakers that the sheer volume of fraud chatter online has changed the culture around stealing public money. He said “the prevalence of fraud discussions online normalizes this behavior and reduces the fear of getting caught and punished.” In other words, fraud has become so routine that potential criminals treat it as low-risk.
The consequences of that normalization show up in case after case. In Minnesota, the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme siphoned roughly $250 million from a federal child-nutrition program and resulted in dozens of convictions. In Mississippi, a welfare scandal totaling approximately $100 million led to criminal charges and high-profile prosecutions.
Westbrooks acknowledged a hard truth: no system can stop every fraudulent claim. He told the committee plainly that “it is simply impossible or impracticable to design a 100% fraud-proof program.” But he drew a clear line on what the public has a right to expect.
“The American public should reasonably expect that public money is not used to pay dead people, incarcerated individuals, or duplicate claims in the same state or across states, and that public funds are otherwise appropriately safeguarded.”
Paying dead people. Paying inmates. Paying the same person twice in two different states. These are not sophisticated attacks. They are basic verification failures, the kind that a competent system should catch before a check goes out. And yet they persist, year after year, program after program.
The federal government’s track record on massive spending programs already inspires little confidence among taxpayers. When the same government cannot run a basic cross-check against death records or prison rolls before disbursing funds, the credibility problem deepens.
Westbrooks urged officials to “aggressively but responsibly adopt new technology tools in the fight against fraud.” He called for what he described as “a coordinated and comprehensive, risk- and data-driven approach”, language that signals just how fragmented and reactive current defenses remain.
The COVID-19 emergency spending spree created a target-rich environment for fraud. Congress pushed trillions of dollars out the door under emergency rules that loosened or eliminated normal verification steps. Speed was the priority. Accountability was an afterthought.
The SBA inspector general’s report found that at least $136 billion in potential fraud hit the COVID-EIDL program alone, with another $64 billion in the Paycheck Protection Program. Former Biden administration adviser Gene Sperling cautioned that “$200 billion is a very big number, but this, again, should be remembered as potential fraud”, a distinction that matters legally but offers cold comfort to taxpayers who funded those programs.
Most of the suspected fraud occurred early in the pandemic, when verification was weakest and urgency was highest. That timing is not an excuse. It is a lesson, one that the federal government has been painfully slow to absorb.
The problem extends well beyond pandemic programs. Medicaid, food assistance, and other ongoing benefit systems face the same structural weaknesses Westbrooks described: limited real-time eligibility checks, poor cross-state data sharing, and technology that lags years behind the tools criminals use. A federal judge recently upheld the Trump administration’s Medicaid funding hold on Minnesota as part of a broader fraud fight, a sign that the executive branch is beginning to use its leverage.
President Donald Trump has appointed Vice President J.D. Vance as the administration’s “fraud czar,” tasking him with addressing taxpayer theft across federal programs. The appointment signals that the White House views benefit fraud not as a back-office bookkeeping issue but as a front-line policy priority.
Lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee are already increasing their focus on the issue. The hearing where Westbrooks testified is part of a broader push to examine how federally funded state programs handle, or fail to handle, fraud prevention. The committee has also been active on other accountability fronts, including subpoenaing the attorney general over the handling of the Epstein files.
Meanwhile, the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force has flagged $6.3 billion in potential fraudulent government contracts, another thread in a sprawling pattern of waste. Separate federal investigations have targeted hospice fraud schemes draining Medicare, with hundreds of suspect facilities identified in cities like Los Angeles alone.
The scale is difficult to overstate. Hundreds of billions of dollars, money collected from working Americans, flowed to people who were not eligible, not alive, or not even in the country. The systems designed to prevent that outcome failed at nearly every level.
Westbrooks told lawmakers there is “no one-size-fits-all solution.” Fair enough. But the gap between the fraud problem and the government’s response is not a matter of perfection versus imperfection. It is a matter of basic competence versus institutional negligence.
Cross-referencing benefit claims against death records is not cutting-edge technology. Checking whether an applicant is incarcerated is not an unreasonable burden. Flagging duplicate claims filed in multiple states is not a moonshot. These are elementary steps that private-sector financial institutions perform as a matter of routine.
The question is not whether a 100-percent fraud-proof system is possible. Westbrooks himself said it is not. The question is why the federal government has tolerated systems that fail at the most basic checks, and whether the current push for accountability will produce real structural change or just another round of hearings.
Criminals can buy a stolen identity for the price of a Happy Meal. Taxpayers deserve a government that at least makes them work harder for it.
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