Federal Reports

Two Amtrak employees were sentenced in August 2025 and a third pleaded guilty in July 2025 for their roles in a health care fraud conspiracy investigated by Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). In addition, a New York-based physical therapist pleaded guilty in June 2025 for her role in the scheme. Since May 2025, Amtrak has terminated 17 other employees who took part in the scheme but were not criminally charged. In total, 71 employees have resigned or were terminated since the inception of this investigation.

Amtrak employees Damany Walker of Gloversville, New York, and David McBrien, of Levittown, Pennsylvania, were sentenced August 20, 2025, and August 21, 2025, respectively, to two years of probation. Walker was ordered to pay $428,523 in restitution and McBrien was ordered to pay $234,778. Amtrak employee Gregory Richardson, 35, of Roosevelt, New York, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud on July 17, 2025, in U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey. Walker, McBrien, and Richardson accepted cash kickbacks from health care providers for the use of their insurance information to file false and questionable medical claims for services that were never provided or not medically necessary.

Taejin Kim, a licensed physical therapist of Bayside, New York, was one of at least four health care providers who participated in the scheme. Kim pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud on June 11, 2025. Kim submitted false and fraudulent claims to Amtrak’s insurance plan, and Amtrak paid approximately $2,253,453 as a result.

VA medical facilities use automated dispensing cabinets to help manage medication inventory and allow clinical staff to dispense medications to patients near the point of care. The OIG conducted this national review to evaluate whether controls at VHA medical facilities ensure accountability over high-risk medications when clinical staff remove them from these cabinets using generic information, such as codes or nonpatient information.

The OIG estimated that in fiscal year 2024, VA medical facilities could not fully account for 46 percent of medications removed with generic information from cabinet A (one of two types of cabinets reviewed, called A and B in the report). Facilities had the most issues tracing propofol to specific patients. Cabinet B transactions could not be projected due to data limitations, but these transactions may also be at risk of not being traceable to a patient. These issues occurred because medical facilities’ standard operating procedures and local policies did not address monitoring of medication removals from cabinets using generic information. Some staff reported using generic information out of convenience or to be more efficient.

The OIG reviewed 40 transactions in which staff removed controlled substances using generic information and found one instance in which a facility could not trace a controlled substance to a specific patient. VHA policy does not prohibit using cabinets to store controlled substances, but it does require facilities to maintain full accountability over them through an electronic record that tracks the medication’s removal from a cabinet to its final dispensation. Removing medications without using a patient’s name increases the risk of drug diversion, so this practice should be closely monitored.

VHA concurred with the OIG’s three recommendations to enhance local guidance on, compliance with, and monitoring of these transactions.
 

Why We Did This Report

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General conducted this audit to determine to what extent the EPA National Center for Radiation Field Operations, or NCRFO, has the capability—including appropriate management and internal control, resources, and staff qualifications—to successfully fulfill its roles and responsibilities in preparing for and responding to radiological incidents. 

Summary of Findings

We found that the NCRFO needs to take steps to improve its preparedness to respond to radiological emergencies. While the NCRFO successfully conducted nonemergency responses, such as site assessments, we found that it was not fully prepared for the one emergency response it conducted during the period we reviewed.

This report provides the results of Objective 1, in which we determined whether the State of Michigan used FNS SNAP administrative funds to provide benefits to participants.

This report summarizes the results of Sikich’s independent evaluation and contains ten new recommendations that will assist the agency in improving the effectiveness of its information security and its privacy programs and practices. NCUA management concurred with and has identified corrective actions to address the recommendations.

Our Objective(s)
To perform a quality control review (QCR) of KPMG LLP's examination of the Enterprise Services Center's (ESC) description of its system and the suitability of the design and operating effectiveness of controls for the period October 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025. We reviewed KPMG's report, dated July 31, 2025, and related documentation.

Why This Audit
ESC provides financial management services to the Department of Transportation (DOT) and other agencies and operates under the direction of DOT's Chief Financial Officer. The Office of Management and Budget requires ESC, as a service organization, to either provide its user organizations with independent audit reports on the design and effectiveness of its internal controls or allow user auditors to perform tests of its controls. We contracted with KPMG LLP to conduct this examination subject to our oversight.

What We Found
The independent auditor, KPMG, found that in all material respects:
the description fairly presents ESC's system that was designed and implemented throughout the period October 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025;
the controls related to the control objectives stated in the description were suitably designed to provide reasonable assurance that the control objectives would be achieved if the controls operated effectively throughout the period October 1,2024, to June 30, 2025; and user entities applied the complementary controls assumed in the design of ESC's controls throughout the period October 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025; and
the controls operated effectively to provide reasonable assurance that the control objectives stated in the description were achieved throughout the period October 1, 2024, to June30, 2025, if complementary user entity controls assumed in the design of ESC's controls operated effectively throughout the period October 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025.

Our QCR disclosed no instances in which KPMG did not comply, in all material respects, with generally accepted Government auditing standards.

Recommendations
KPMG made no recommendations.
The underlying report has been marked and/or withheld as Controlled Unclassified Information to protect sensitive information that may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S. Code 552.