Fraud expert warns deepfakes are defeating government identity checks

A fraud expert testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday warned that the federal government lacks the tools and policies needed to prevent criminals from using artificial intelligence against taxpayers.

“What’s happening right now is the fact that we don’t have the right tools to deal with fraud,” David Maimon, president of SentiLink Fraud Insights, told Fox News Digital.

“We don’t have the right policies to deal with fraud. We don’t have adequate deterrence. We don’t have close cooperation between government and government. [private] “The industry will try to find the right solution to this problem.”

The hearing, titled “Emerging Fraud Threats and the Evolving Fraud Landscape,” was held by the Subcommittee on Government Operations as the Trump administration launches a nationwide “War on Fraud” led by Vice President J.D. Vance and focused on how the federal government can better detect and prevent emerging fraud threats through stronger digital authentication.

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“Fraud against government programs is no longer just a series of isolated schemes,” Maimon told MPs during the hearing. “This is a resilient, specialized criminal infrastructure.”

He also told lawmakers that “criminals exploit the seams between agencies because our defenses are built program by program, while their infrastructure is built to span all of them.”

Maimon pointed out how his company gathers intelligence to “understand how criminals work, what they do, and how they do what they do,” while uncovering networks where fraudsters share stolen information and tactics.

“We have been able to infiltrate thousands of markets where fraudsters operate, where you can find identities and stolen checks, where you can find training on how to commit fraud against the government or how to target financial institutions across the country,” he said.

He said one of the biggest challenges is keeping up with rapidly evolving fraud tactics.

“The most important thing is to make sure the government is aware of some of the fraudulent trends that fraudsters engage in, essentially stealing taxpayers’ money,” Maimon said.

Maimon said the government’s gradual introduction of anti-fraud tools allowed criminals to “take advantage of these opportunities” and “continue to exploit” resources.

“The bad guys move faster than the government,” he said. “While the government is still trying to find and implement better tools, criminals continue to find new ways to steal money.”

According to Maimon, criminals are now using AI to create fake documents, videos and phishing emails that steal passwords and personal information or bypass authentication.

“It is difficult to prove that you are not actually using artificial intelligence when verifying your identity with documents, liveness tests and selfie images,” he said.

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Vice President J.D. Vance speaks alongside Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz about combating fraud at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, on February 25, 2026. (REUTERS)

During the hearing, Maimon said fraudsters were already using “AI-generated faces and deepfake videos to circumvent liveness checks at digital banks and tax preparers.”

Pointing to his previous investigation into Medicaid fraud, Maimon said his team discovered providers who billed the government nearly $2 million and claimed to have staff and caregivers, but when investigators visited the addresses in person, many of the employees and operations were not present.

“Sometimes you have to look at the signals that appear in the database but also the physical location,” he said.

Rather than relying on an image or video, the government should verify identities using reliable historical data that is harder for AI to fake, Maimon said.

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David Maimon, president of SentiLink Fraud Insights, testifies before the Government Operations Subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee during a hearing on emerging fraud threats in Washington, D.C., on July 15, 2026 (Parliamentary Oversight Subcommittee)

“To make sure we solve this problem, and it really depends on the type of fraud you’re dealing with, but to address this problem more effectively, we need some historical signals about the identities that we’re trying to verify, rather than maybe just looking at images that can be easily created with AI tools,” he said.

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Maimon told lawmakers that fraud affects more than government finances and ultimately harms the people these programs are designed to serve, saying: “Every dollar we protect from organized fraud is a dollar available to the people Congress intended to help.”

But after years of examining the dark web and Telegram markets, Maimon said law enforcement has uncovered only a fraction of the organized fraud.

“I guess they’re just scratching the surface.”