Over the past year, the Federal government has emphasized the importance of efficiency and fraud detection, as evidenced by the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (Jan 2025), the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud (Mar 2026), and the National Fraud Enforcement Division (Apr 2026). Specifically in California, there continues to be a seemingly endless stream of breaking news stories about fraud, waste, and abuse in local governments’ spending of pandemic and homelessness funds as auditors study the results of those programs and the public calls for measurable outcomes and accountability.

For the local government administrators charged with carrying out those programs, what has their experience been in all this? Is fraud truly as rampant in the system as the news makes it out to be? And what are government leaders creating newly in response to this environment of risk and opportunity?

Megan Gómez, CIA, CGFM, is currently Deputy Director of Finance and Administration at the County of Riverside Department of Housing and Workforce Solutions. Since 2022, she has overseen the HWS budget of $500M+ in State and Federal grants and funding allocations intended to combat poverty, address homelessness, develop the local workforce, create affordable housing, and administer the County’s Section 8 rental assistance program. In the last 3 years she has uncovered $3M+ in fraudulent spending that is currently either under investigation by the DOJ and IRS or in active criminal prosecution by the District Attorney.

Megan’s experiences with fraud began in her first job after college in 2000 working for public CPA firm Arthur Andersen, the paper-shredding auditors of Enron fame. Since then, she has developed a keen eye for identifying risks and opportunities and turning them into either process and efficiency improvements or fraud, waste, and abuse investigations.