The Department of Treasury announced on Feb. 28 the recovery of over $375 million worth of fraudulently transmitted money through a new AI-enhanced fraud detection process.
The Treasury Department Office of Payment Integrity (OPI), within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service), has implemented a new AI mitigation technique to stop check fraud that uses near real-time abilities that strengthen and speed up recovery of potentially fraudulent payments from financial institutions.
“The Treasury Department is committed to safeguarding taxpayer dollars through payment integrity – paying the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, and ensuring that Social Security payments, tax refunds, and other types of checks, and people who are receiving them, are safe from fraud,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo.
“We are using the latest technological advances to enhance our fraud detection process, and AI has allowed us to expedite the detection of fraud and recovery of tax dollars,” added Adeyemo.
Since the pandemic, the Department of Treasury has seen a spike in check fraud by over 385 percent.
“This upward trend continued into 2022, when the number of [Suspicious Activity Reports] SARs related to check fraud reached over 680,000, nearly double from the previous year’s filings. Incidents of Treasury check fraud are also on the rise,” stated the Treasury Department.
“The enhanced AI process and OPI’s strong partnership with federal law enforcement agencies have led to multiple active cases and arrests with law enforcement,” concluded the Treasury Department.
