Government Card Fraud

I've seen this story about abuse of government cards on QandO and now at Kim's place. I've commented both places, but I'll leave a record here as well.

I'm a government travel card holder. I have to undergo regular travel card fraud/waste/abuse training. The training is mostly bullshit because using travel cards is common sense and abusing them is premeditated.

The reason people are pulling this crap is because they know they can get away with it. Their organizations are lenient or just don't bother to follow up properly and the kiddies using the cards know it. If they didn't know this in advance, they wouldn't be making the charges. Why? Because on a travel card, the card holder (me) is stuck with the bill not the government. I get permission to travel, but I'm personally responsible for everything on the card. The government simply reimburses me for the valid expenses before I get the bill. And that bill is due, payable in full, when it shows up at your door at the end of the month. Nobody is going to pull this crap if they don't know they can get away with it in advance, because nobody wants to get stuck holding the bill.

If you want to see this stuff stop, you just start leaving people with the bill for these abuses. If the auditors let them slip through, you fire them for not doing their jobs. The problem is that you need someone with the stones to implement this as policy. Crack down on this and you'll see it grind to a halt just like it did years ago in the corporate world.