Under 28 U.S.C. § 586(f), the U.S. Trustee Program contracts with independent firms to audit consumer (Chapter 7 and Chapter 13) bankruptcy cases. The USTP may randomly designate roughly one in 250 cases per district, and may designate exception audits where a debtor’s income or expenditures deviate from statistical norms. An audit results in a Report of Audit, which may note one or more material misstatements. A material misstatement is the audit firm’s finding, not a legal determination of fraud or intent. The table reproduces the reported figures verbatim; OBP adds no adjustment or interpretation. See our methodology.
| Fiscal year | Random designated | Exception designated | Reports of Audit filed | Material misstatement rate | Random rate | Exception rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2007 | 3,016 | 933 | 3,582 | 30% | 27% | 38% |
| FY 2008 | 1,025 | 360 | 1,276 | 21% | 18% | 28% |
| FY 2009 | 1,260 | 1,095 | 2,261 | 22% | 16% | 28% |
| FY 2010 | 1,395 | 1,280 | 2,562 | 23% | 17% | 29% |
| FY 2011 | 533 | 522 | 1,008 | 25% | 20% | 31% |
| FY 2012 | 565 | 863 | 1,351 | 25% | 16% | 31% |
| FY 2013 | 203 | 216 | 390 | 25% | 17% | 32% |
| FY 2014 | 824 | 770 | 1,498 | 23% | 16% | 31% |
| FY 2015 | 1,114 | 1,678 | 2,634 | 23% | 16% | 27% |
| FY 2016 | 390 | 412 | 760 | 20% | 13% | 26% |
| FY 2017 | 485 | 488 | 920 | 23% | 19% | 28% |
| FY 2018 | 1,153 | 861 | 1,891 | 23% | 17% | 32% |
| FY 2019 | 1,744 | 885 | 2,490 | 22% | 18% | 31% |
| FY 2020 | 995 | 347 | 793 | 16% | 14% | 22% |
| FY 2023 | 275 | 299 | 537 | 24% | 15% | 32% |
| FY 2024 | 331 | 243 | 539 | 20% | 17% | 25% |
Notes: “Designated” counts are cases selected for audit; not every designation results in a filed Report of Audit (some cases are suspended, dismissed, or otherwise closed), so designated totals exceed Reports of Audit filed. Exception audits target statistical outliers and consistently show a higher misstatement rate than random audits. FY2021 and FY2022 public audit reports are not included in the source set. FY2020 figures reflect pandemic-related audit suspensions.
Across FY2007–2024 the overall material-misstatement rate has stayed in a narrow band, roughly 20–25 percent in most years (range 16–30 percent) — that is, in about one in five audited consumer-bankruptcy cases an audit firm reported at least one material misstatement. Exception audits, which are targeted at outliers, find misstatements at a consistently higher rate than random audits.