Larry D. Turner: Former Labor Inspector General

In the archive

Larry D. Turner ran the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General through the pandemic, first as Acting Inspector General from June 2020 and then as the Senate-confirmed Inspector General from December 7, 2021.¹² In February 2023 he told Congress that at least $191 billion of the roughly $888 billion paid in pandemic unemployment benefits could have been improper, "with a significant portion attributable to fraud."³ He was removed in the January 2025 firings of inspectors general, and sued.⁴²

Career before the pandemic

Turner spent 23 years on active military duty and retired as a lieutenant colonel. His inspector-general career ran through the Army and the Defense Department OIG, where he was Deputy and Acting Assistant Inspector General for Communications and Congressional Liaison. At DOL he was Deputy Inspector General from September 2014 to June 2020.²¹

Pandemic-relief role

Unemployment insurance was the pandemic program with the largest losses, and DOL-OIG was its auditor. Pandemic Unemployment Assistance let applicants self-certify their eligibility; an October 2020 audit survey reported states' warnings that the requirement left them unable to detect fraud.⁵ Its estimates grew with the data:

$45.6 billion. A September 21, 2022 alert memorandum counted potentially fraudulent UI payments from March 2020 to April 2022 to Social Security numbers filed in multiple states, belonging to deceased persons or used with suspicious email accounts. It had counted more than $16 billion in those areas, plus federal prisoners, through October 2020; the Bureau of Prisons declined to supply updated prisoner data.⁶
$163 billion, then $191 billion. Applying the Employment and Training Administration's improper-payment rate to the whole pandemic outlay, the office first reported at least $163 billion on $872.5 billion of estimated funding. In his February 8, 2023 testimony Turner raised it to at least $191 billion, using ETA's 21.52 percent rate and $888 billion of actual payments. He noted that the rate excluded PUA, whose controls, he said, "may have facilitated comparable or greater improper payments."³

The office's own tally of enforcement, as of January 2025: more than 1,050 search warrants, more than 2,075 people charged, more than 1,550 convictions, 39,000 months of incarceration and more than $1.1 billion in investigative monetary results. It also sent more than 45,000 fraud matters that fell below federal prosecution guidelines back to the states.⁷ The $191 billion is an improper-payment estimate; the office did not say how much of it was fraud.

Turner sat on the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, chaired by Michael Horowitz, and was the unemployment-insurance counterpart to Hannibal Ware at SBA's Inspector General's office.¹² The vendors states used to screen those claims are profiled at Thomson Reuters / Pondera; the state-level numbers are at UI fraud estimates and UI overpayments by state.

Removal and lawsuit

Bloomberg Law reported his removal in the January 2025 firings and the statute's requirement that Congress get notice before an inspector general is removed.⁴ On February 12, 2025 Turner, Ware and six other inspectors general sued the President and their agency heads in Storch v. Hegseth (D.D.C. No. 1:25-cv-415). The complaint says Acting Labor Secretary Vincent Micone cut off Turner's access to agency devices, networks and buildings, and that during his tenure the office issued 137 reports, made over 400 recommendations and "delivered a monetary impact of over $75 billion."²

On September 24, 2025 Judge Ana C. Reyes found that the firings broke the Inspector General Act's 30-day notice requirement but declined to reinstate the eight, reasoning that the President could simply fire them again after giving notice. The docket shows the case stayed pending the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Slaughter.⁸⁹¹⁰

Since 2025

The complaint says Turner, as a former member of the Senior Executive Service, is entitled by statute to elect to rejoin it.² We found no later public-sector appointment, PPP-company role, lobbying registration or defense-bar move.

Documents on this site

Original source documents and archived copies

Sources

Notes

House Oversight witness bio, Larry D. Turner, Mar. 9, 2023. ↩
Complaint, Storch v. Hegseth, No. 1:25-cv-00415 (D.D.C. Feb. 12, 2025). Original: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/eight-inspectors-general-sue-trump-firings.pdf Inspectors General Complaint — Storch v. Hegseth (D.D.C.) (stored capture) ↩
DOL-OIG congressional testimony, Larry D. Turner, Feb. 8, 2023. ↩
Bloomberg Law, "Department of Labor's Independent Watchdog Fired by White House". ↩
DOL-OIG Report 19-21-001-03-315, "COVID-19: States Cite Vulnerabilities in Detecting Fraud While Complying with the CARES Act UI Program Self-Certification Requirement," Oct. 21, 2020. ↩
DOL-OIG Alert Memorandum 19-22-005-03-315, "Potentially Fraudulent Unemployment Insurance Payments in High-Risk Areas Increased to $45.6 Billion," Sept. 21, 2022. Original: Potentially Fraudulent Ui Payments In High Risk Areas Increased To 45 (original: oig.dol.gov) ↩
DOL Office of Inspector General — UI oversight work. ↩
The Washington Post, "Federal judge declines to reinstate inspectors general fired by Trump," Sept. 25, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/25/trump-inspectors-general-fired/ ↩
CNN, "Federal judge refuses to reinstate eight former inspectors general fired by Trump administration," Sept. 24, 2025. CNN Politics, "Federal judge refuses to reinstate eight former inspectors general fired by Trump administration" (Sept. 24, 2025) (original: cnn.com) ↩
Storch v. Hegseth, No. 1:25-cv-00415, Memorandum Opinion and Order, Doc. 54 (D.D.C. Sept. 24, 2025). Storch v. Hegseth, D.D.C. 1:25-cv-00415, Doc. 54 opinion (original: law.justia.com) ↩