Help save billions through Fraud Working Group

  • Published
  • By Benjamin Newell
  • 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. (AFNS) --  The ability to spot fraud during weapons systems acquisition will be the focus of an upcoming Northeast Fraud Working Group meeting Oct. 30.

Air Force Materiel Command sees approximately 90 percent of all Air Force significant fraud cases, and efforts by AFMC personnel have helped save the government more than $1.3 billion. More than 35 parties per year are prohibited from doing business with the government by sharp-eyed fraud detectors who look for issues with labor, hardware and, increasingly, electronic parts and software.

“Our message to government employees is this: ‘You are the protectors of warfighter supply’,” said Drew Ayers, acquisition fraud counsel with AFMC’s law office, who helped organize the conference. “If something seems off, it probably is. If you act, you can keep men and women downrange safe by alerting us or investigators at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.”

According to Ayers, his office works hard to put dollars recovered from fraud cases back on contract where possible.

Six attorneys at AFMC have trained more than 15,000 government employees, over the past ten years, across the country how to spot fraud through several training methods.

Three speakers will teach Hanscom AFB personnel how to spot fraud during the Oct. 30 meeting at the Brown Conference Room at Hanscom AFB's Building 1305, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Working group attendees are eligible for continuous learning points and professional education credit.

The speakers include: Ralph Kisich, an AFOSI agent from procurement fraud in detachment 6; Rogelio Fernandez, Associate General Counsel for the U.S. Air Force’s contractor responsibility; and Abraham Raymond, a Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general special agent. They will address common types of fraud schemes, ways the government remedies fraud and what types of fraud the local Veterans Affairs medical network frequently sees.

Acquisition personnel should take suspected fraud to AFOSI. Agents there act defensively and offensively to prevent and respond to fraud. Defensively, AFOSI trains and briefs on fraud prevention techniques. Offensively, it detects, investigates and neutralizes fraud by working with other law enforcement agencies and building cases to deter further harm to the acquisition process.

There is no signup sheet, but navigate here to register for continuous learning points. Click “apply for a CL event” and then select “Northeast Fraud Working Group October 2018” from the dropdown event list.