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Report Fraud, Waste and Abuse
August 07, 2018
  • Chief Financial Officer
2018-KC-0002

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General audited HUD because we learned while doing unrelated audit work that funds HUD was entitled to would be turned over to a State as unclaimed property if they were not claimed.  This information led us to conduct searches on several States’ unclaimed property websites and find thousands of unclaimed funds listed in HUD’s name or other similar names.  HUD may not have been aware of these funds.  Our objective was to determine whether HUD located and recovered funds due to it as identified on States' unclaimed property websites.


We found that HUD did not locate and recover its funds held by State unclaimed property administrators.  As a result, HUD was lacking the benefit of its portion of $1.9 million collected by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and will be lacking the benefit of its portion of an additional $2.2 million in current unclaimed funds.


We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Chief Financial Officer (1) designate an unclaimed asset recovery official as required by the Treasury Financial Manual, (2) work with Treasury to identify and obtain reimbursement for the Federal Housing Administration’s and Government National Mortgage Association’s portion of the $1.9 million in HUD funds that Treasury collected, and (3) establish and implement policies and procedures to ensure that all of its unclaimed funds are claimed and the money is appropriately routed to put $2.2 million to better use.

Recommendations
Recommendation Status Date Issued Summary
2018-KC-0002-001-A Closed August 07, 2018 Designate an unclaimed asset recovery official as required by the Treasury Financial Manual.
2018-KC-0002-001-B Closed August 07, 2018 Work with Treasury to identify and obtain reimbursement for FHA’s and Ginnie Mae’s portion of the $1.9 million in HUD funds that Treasury collected.
2018-KC-0002-001-C Closed August 07, 2018 Establish and implement policies and procedures to ensure that all of its unclaimed funds are claimed and the money is appropriately routed to put $2.2 million to better use. At a minimum, these policies and procedures should address what constitutes FHA and Ginnie Mae funds, ensure that these funds are returned to FHA or Ginnie Mae as appropriate, and include policies to claim co-owned funds with any appropriate thresholds or limitations.