ArsT:

A key program in the Federal Communications Commission's Universal Service Fund overpaid telecommunications carriers by almost a billion dollars from July 2006 through June 2007. This disclosure, which is sure to provoke more cries for a massive overhaul of the USF, comes from a preliminary FCC audit of the USF's High Cost fund released just before Thanksgiving. The review says that 23.3% of the payments the USF made to telcos were "erroneous"—that's up from an earlier estimate of 16.6 percent. The latest total comes to $970.3 million in bad payouts.
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The Commission says that this money cannot be recovered, because it is based on a random sample audit of USF beneficiaries. "In order to recover erroneous payments that are approximately $970.3 million," the Office of Inspector Generals' (OIG) report observes, "an audit of the entire population of High Cost beneficiaries would be necessary." This also suggests that the actual total sum of incorrect grants could be much higher than what the audit found.

I mean, we wouldn't want to have to do an audit, heavens forfend, no! That could cost money.