Summary: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) continues to respond to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. GAO's previous work identified suspected fraud, waste, and abuse resulting from control weaknesses associated with FEMA's Individuals and Households Program (IHP) and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) purchase card program. Congress asked GAO to follow up on this previous work to determine whether potentially improper and/or fraudulent payments continued to be made. GAO testified on the results of our audit and investigative efforts on December 6, 2006. This report summarizes the results of our follow-up work.
In our December 6, 2006, testimony, GAO stated that FEMA made tens of millions of dollars of potentially improper and/or fraudulent payments associated with both hurricanes Katrina and Rita. These payments include $17 million in rental assistance paid to individuals to whom FEMA had already provided free housing through trailers or apartments. In one case, FEMA provided free housing to 10 individuals in apartments in Plano, Texas, while at the same time it sent these individuals $46,000 to cover out-of-pocket housing expenses. In addition, several of these individuals certified to FEMA that they needed rental assistance. FEMA made nearly $20 million in duplicate payments to thousands of individuals who claimed damages to the same property from both hurricanes Katrina and Rita. FEMA also made millions in potentially improper and/or fraudulent payments to nonqualified aliens who were not eligible for IHP. For example, FEMA paid at least $3 million to more than 500 ineligible foreign students at four universities in the affected areas. This amount likely understates the total payments to ineligible foreign students because it does not cover all colleges and universities in the area. FEMA also provided potentially improper and/or fraudulent IHP assistance to other ineligible non-U.S. residents, despite having documentation indicating their ineligibility. Finally, FEMA's difficulties in identifying and collecting improper payments further emphasized the importance of implementing an effective fraud, waste, and abuse prevention system. For example, GAO previously estimated improper and potentially fraudulent payments related to the IHP application process to be $1 billion through February 2006. As of November 2006, FEMA identified about $290 million in overpayments and collected about $7 million. Finally, GAO's work on DHS purchase cards showed continuing problems with property accountability, including items GAO investigated that could not be located 1 year after they were purchased.
