Ministry of Defense signs £21.1 billion with suspicious invoices as fraud crackdown intensifies
Over the past three years, the Ministry of Defence has marked and rejected suspicious invoices of over £211 billion as it ramps up efforts to combat financial fraud in one of the government’s most complex and highest-value sectors.
Based on official data obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request and analyzed by the Parliament Street think tank, the Ministry of Defense rejected 8,918 invoices, citing concerns about invalid pricing, tax anomalies, missing supplier data, copies, duplicate entries and invalid purchase orders. The total value of the rejected invoice reached £211,649,900,000.
Although 5,063 marked invoices were later corrected and re-submitted, 3,855 were permanently rejected, highlighting the scale of attempted or unexpected errors in the department’s procurement system.
These revelations follow a series of compelling fraud cases that shocked the internal accounting and financial oversight systems of the Department of Defense.
In April, former corporal Aaron Stelmach-Purdie was sentenced to prison for utilizing Mod’s employee expense platform to plot a £911,677 fraud. The court heard that he manipulated the allowance claim and earned himself £550,000.
Just two months later, Army soldier Andrew Oakes was found guilty of theft of more than £300,000, forged stubs as a financial administrator and redirected funds to a personal account. The stolen money is used to buy multiple high-end vehicles, including three Teslas, a mini Cooper and a Nissan Qashqai.
These cases have prompted calls for stricter financial control and modernization of verification systems, and a growing consensus around the role of AI and machine learning in fraud prevention.
Jason Kurtz, CEO of E invoicing Platform Basware, said the scale of rejection of invoices highlights the vulnerability of the public sector financial system.
“When fraud is suspected, we often see big fluctuations in billing because criminals exploit stolen or cloned certificates,” Kurtz explains. “Stop payments are only half the battle – the burden of resources investigating fake or incomplete invoices is huge.”
He called for more deployment of AI-powered verification tools that can review invoices before entering the payment system, reducing the burden on overstretched finance teams.
Dr. Janet Bastiman, chief data scientist at Napier AI, added that invoice fraud is a common strategy for organized crime use that can be used for funding from high volumes of government departments.
“Malicious actors often use fake files and rogue bank accounts to cheer for money laundering and illegal actions,” Bastiman said. “The government departments that manage thousands of supplier payments a day are obvious targets. AI-driven anomaly detection provides a positive way to capture suspicious transactions before damages are damaged.”
With increasing scrutiny of financial management, the Department of Defense is facing pressure to strengthen invoice audit systems and modernize its procurement oversight methods.
The huge number and value of tagged invoices suggests that while capturing many of the worst examples, existing safeguards are not fully prepared to prevent mass fraud.
These findings are at a time when public spending remains vulnerable to defense, with fiscal discipline at a strong political priority. As the Department of Defense counters rising operating costs and evolving global threats, its financial resilience may increasingly rely on its digital defense capabilities rather than its physical defense capabilities.
