By Rebekah Chiasson | Assistant Editor
The Defense Department had to present their audit this June and could not account for $6.5 trillion. Investigators, including Reuters who first released the report, believe the missing money is due to “unreliable” data and “fudged” numbers.
The Defense Department’s annual budget is roughly $600 billion, but according to their audit report, “The Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis (DFAS Indianapolis) did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter adjustments and $6.5 trillion in yearend adjustments.” The DFAS managed to double their already enormous loss in the last quarter of the fiscal year. In addition to the trillions lost, more than 16,000 files “vanished” from the DFAS’s computer system because of “a flaw in the computing software,” according to the report.