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Fraud Awareness

  • Published
  • By Special Agent Curtis Brown
  • Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Detachment 419
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  What would you do if you reviewed your monthly credit card statement and discovered you were billed twice for the same purchase? I'm sure you would immediately investigate the charges, notify the creditor, and demand they remove the excess charge. After all, it's your money! What if you purchased your wife a new $18,000 gold necklace and later discovered it was only cheap, gold-plated copper? After exhaustive explanations and desperate apologies, I'm sure you would immediately return the item and demand your money back. After all, it's your money!

As individual consumers, we usually do a pretty good job of policing our personal finances to ensure precise accountability of our money. Overall, we have an acute awareness of our financial dealings. As government employees, we need to apply the same level of alertness within our work centers to identify fraud impacting the federal government. Fraud schemes exist in the corporate realm and private sector, with our employer, the Department of Defense, as the victim.

Fraud is prevalent within the DoD and its strain on our financial resources is enormous. Each year the DoD loses millions of dollars through schemes orchestrated by white-collar criminals and federal employees who cheat the federal government for corporate or personal financial gain. Some common fraud schemes include:

- Corruption - When somebody in a position of responsibility wrongfully or unlawfully uses his or her position to procure benefits for himself or another person.
- Bribery - Paying, soliciting, or receiving a private favor for public action/inaction.
- Kickbacks/gratuities - An illegal payment or favor made in return for a referral, which resulted in a transaction or contract.
- Embezzlement - Fraudulent appropriation of money, assets, etc, by a person who has been entrusted.
- Product substitution - A known submission by a contractor to the government for goods that do not conform to contract specifications.
- Contract bid rigging - An agreement by two or more contract bidders where one or more agree to not submit a bid or to submit bids that were arrived at by agreement.
- False billing - False description or accounting treatment of costs, typically labor costs, by government contractors.
- False claims - Knowingly and willfully submitting a false claim to the government.
- Collusion - A secret agreement between two or more parties for fraud or deceit.
- Other areas include: larceny, misappropriation, forgery

Detecting and deterring fraud is one of Air Force Office of Special Investigation's top priorities. AFOSI routinely teams up with the contracting community, military, civilian, and contract employees to neutralize this threat. In recent years, this team effort and AFOSI investigations resulted in more than $234 million dollars in recoveries from companies found guilty of fraud. To put it into perspective, this is more than double the entire AFOSI annual operating budget! However, AFOSI cannot accomplish this task alone, and we need your help. If you have information on indicators of possible fraudulent activity, feel free to contact our office at (850)283-3261 or use the United States Air Force Fraud, Waste, and Abuse hotline at 1-800-538-8429. Anonymous calls are welcomed. Let's work together to protect DoD resources. After all, it's our tax money!