Completely agree with Accountantfag. This is easy to do, even with no one inside the gov helping. If you have the right people in the gov playing dirty also, soooo much money can be funneled. Of course this is super, super illegal, especially if money is wired across state lines, let alone out of the country. Here is an example i actually had to research, for a company that got caught.
Gov hires a contractor to do a job. the contractor hires 2nd tier vendors. one of the vendors was fake and setup by a dirty player in the first tier contractor. 1st tier awarded money to fake 2nd tier, that did nothing, and the other 2nd tier vendor that actually did the work got shorted. contract numbers were inflated to the gov, for both 2nd tier vendors, fake 2nd tier got money.