DOJ Launches National Fraud Detection Center to Hunt Cross-Program Schemes Stealing Hundreds of Billions

The Justice Department on Monday opened the National Fraud Detection Center, a prosecutor-led multi-agency team built to generate criminal leads against the most damaging fraud targeting taxpayer-funded programs, including schemes that jump across agencies and those run from overseas.

Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division called the center a decisive shift in how the government finds complex fraud. By embedding analysts from the inspector-general community, sharing technology, and breaking institutional silos, he said, the NFDC is closing the window that has allowed the same networks to hit multiple federal programs without being seen as a single operation. “If you defraud federal programs, we have the tools and the law enforcement partners to find you,” McDonald said.

The center sits inside the Fraud Division created in April and now staffed at roughly 500 attorneys and personnel, with plans to keep expanding. Inaugural partners include the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, FinCEN, Treasury, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, and inspectors general from Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, HUD, Interior, Labor, Veterans Affairs, Defense, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the Small Business Administration and Social Security.

McDonald cited Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion a year to fraud. He wrote that unabated fraud damages both wallets and public confidence, and that the division will work “without fear or favor” until Americans can again trust that the Justice Department will protect taxpayer dollars.

The NFDC is intended to close a long-standing gap in cross-program visibility. Traditional investigations often stay inside a single agency’s data. Officials say sophisticated actors exploit that fragmentation—filing false claims against Medicare while running parallel schemes against pandemic relief, SNAP, housing or unemployment programs. The center’s job is to surface those patterns and hand prosecutors ready-made cases.

The launch coincides with the formal effective date of the rule establishing the Fraud Division’s authorities and follows an August 13 memo that set five enforcement priorities: public trust and financial integrity, healthcare, tax, global trade and commerce, and corporate misconduct. The effort also supports the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud chaired by Vice President JD Vance. A public tracker at fraud.gov has already listed hundreds of billions in identified fraud and tens of billions in stopped payments and enforcement recoveries since early 2025.

Leadership of the detection center includes Amanda Riedel of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and Cody Matthew Herche of the Global Trade and Commerce Enforcement Section. The department presented the opening as the operational start of a sustained, data-driven campaign rather than a one-time announcement. Whether the new visibility produces faster, larger prosecutions will be measured in the cases that follow.