Ken Dieffenbach, Executive Director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Government Operations Subcommittee, on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, at a hearing titled, “Curbing Federal Fraud: Examining Innovative Tools to Detect and Prevent Fraud in Federal Programs.”
With the Subcommittee’s support, in partnership with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and in recognition of the success of the PRAC model, in July 2025 the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act (Public Law 119-21) extended the PRAC’s sunset date until September 30, 2034, and expanded its jurisdiction to programs funded in the bill.
Building on his testimony in March 2025, Executive Director Dieffenbach updated the Subcommittee on the PRAC’s efforts in fraud prevention, detection, and mitigation, which have recovered over $500 million in taxpayer funds to date. He shared how the PRAC’s responsible use of innovative data analytics tools can proactively identify anomalies, trends, patterns, and hidden connections in benefits applications.
Among Executive Director Dieffenbach’s comments:
“The system we built can [review] 20,000 applications per second, and it’s using all kinds of those technologies to give us an edge on this ‘information war’ to shine light on what’s actually occurring. That, to me, is the single biggest challenge: fraudsters are hiding what they're doing—but using these technologies in a responsible way, with the right datasets and addressing the right risks, can give decisionmakers instantaneous visibility into what is actually occurring.”
“Fraudsters don't take naps or take breaks. We've been able to continue to build upon everything we've learned over the last six years, and I think it's been a tremendous asset to the Congress and to the taxpayer.”
Executive Director Dieffenbach emphasized in his testimony:
The PRAC’s mission is to prevent fraud, ensuring monies reach the right people at the right time. Proactive use of data and technology can help prevent or detect fraud. As seen in a PRAC investigation involving more than 450 applications associated with $2.6 million in funded loans, fraud prevention could have mitigated the need for a resource-intensive investigation and helped ensure taxpayer dollars were disbursed only to those Congress intended to assist.
The PRAC provides partners with advanced data analytics to prevent and detect fraud. The PRAC continues to support its oversight partners, including through a risk model for a $91 billion Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Office of Inspector General (OIG) program that directly resulted in $261.9 million in civil and administrative recoveries to date. The PRAC’s investigative support to more than 50 federal law enforcement and OIG partners has so far supported over 1,200 pandemic-related investigations, with over 24,000 subjects and a potential fraud loss of $2.5 billion.
The PRAC has developed a Fraud Prevention Engine to demonstrate how advanced analytics can proactively identify high-risk applications, strengthen program integrity, and reduce the need for resource-intensive pay and chase. The PRAC has developed an artificial intelligence-enabled “Fraud Prevention Engine” that can review approximately 20,000 applications per second. This proof-of-concept project can flag applications requiring additional due diligence and applications with attributes indicative of organized criminal fraud rings and newly emerging threats to program integrity. Had this model been in use in March 2020, it would have flagged potentially tens of billions of dollars in payments for further scrutiny before funds were disbursed.
Read the Executive Director’s full statement.
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The PRAC promotes transparency and supports oversight of the funds provided by the CARES Act, other emergency coronavirus-related spending bills, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In addition to its coordination and oversight responsibilities, the PRAC is tasked with supporting efforts to “prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement [and] mitigate major risks that cut across program and agency boundaries” within its jurisdiction.
If you have additional questions, please contact Lisa Reijula at lisa.reijula@cigie.gov.