White Paper: Fighting 21st Century Fraud with 20th Century Systems – Why Prevention Beats Recovery & What’s Finally Changing

 Insights from our Chatham House Roundtable Discussion | In Partnership with AWS I June 2026  

The Problem: Federal agencies lose over $100 billion annually to fraud, waste, and abuse, yet most oversight systems were designed before the internet existed. Modern fraud networks move at digital speed, exploit program fragmentation, and adapt faster than government can respond.

The Opportunity: Agencies that invest in prevention over recovery are seeing dramatic returns. CMS stopped or recovered $41.9 billion in FY2025, a 59% increase year-over-year, demonstrating a 22-to-1 return on investment.

Call to Action: The federal government must transform fraud prevention from an isolated compliance exercise into a coordinated, intelligence-driven operational capability, matching the speed, adaptability, and collaboration of the adversaries it faces.