For the first time in history, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has published “reliable estimates of fraud losses affecting the federal government.” The study “estimated total direct annual financial losses to the government from fraud to be between $233 billion and $521 billion, based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022.” Given that there are 131 million households in the U.S., the average annual cost to each U.S. household of fraud in federal government programs was about $1,800 to $4,000 per year. Over the average U.S. lifespan of 78 years, this amounts to a cost of $139,000 to $310,000 per household. These figures don’t include federal tax fraud and noncompliance, which amount to another $275,000 per household. Nor do they include waste and abuse or state and local government fraud.