An investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that fraudsters may have taken up to $60 billion from the numerous unemployment insurance schemes established by stimulus laws passed during the lockdown.
The administration of unemployment programs is the responsibility of state labor agencies, who have formally recorded $4.3 billion in fraud from April 2020 to June 2022. Between March 2020 and April 2022, the Labor Department’s fraud cases, which constitute another fraud measure, may have resulted in around $45 billion in illegal payments. A cautious estimate of $60 billion would result from extrapolating an even lower figure from the organization, which stated that at least 7.6% of monthly unemployment payments were fraudulent.
According to a post from the Government Accountability Office, “Current measurements and estimates do not reflect the whole level of fraud, but they do give valuable insights on fraud concerns. And although fraud risks rose as a result of the epidemic, some will endure for a very long time if not handled.”
Between April 2020 and September 2022, $878 billion was paid out over all unemployment compensation systems. The agency added, “The need to quickly execute the new programs and the high demand for benefits elevated the chance of financial fraud.”
Department of Justice employees has been working to recover the tax money that was taken illegally. The study gave the example of a former employee of the state employment agency who submitted nearly 200 false applications while using other people’s identities; the person was sentenced to pay $4.3 million in reparations and would serve more than five years in jail. In another case, a person submitted at least 300 applications around the nation using stolen identities and received more than 3 years in prison and a $1.6 million fine.
A rapper who bragged about his plan in a music video is another egregious example of unemployment insurance fraud, as are other present and former IRS workers who misused their positions to access the cash.
A substantially higher sum of wasted resources is implied by larger totals of misused economic stimulus funding. According to the Labor Department, up to $163 billion in benefits from unemployment insurance “may be incorrect, with a sizable percentage being linked to fraud.” According to CEO Blake Hall, $400 billion, or 50% of the unemployment benefits, would ultimately be stolen.
Over the past two years, House Republicans that are on the Ways and Means panel have repeatedly asked for hearings to look into the fraud; Democrats have routinely denied the requests, the members claim.
“Because Dems. have refused to acknowledge the issue and consistently denied Republican efforts to put fundamental safeguards in place to protect against this activity, American families, whose salaries have eroded under Joe Biden’s inflation disaster, have witnessed thousands of billions of their own hard-earned tax dollars get lost through criminal conduct and fraud. Congressional Democrats abdicated their oversight duties by failing to investigate how this occurred, what could have been done to stop it, or even how much money has actually been lost, allowing criminals to benefit off the backs of taxpayers.”
I find it Ironic these people can get away with stealing this amount of money yet the common individual like myself has had to struggle and fight for everything when I lost my job with all the red tape and even low balling the amount I would receive and running me through the ringer.
If I had been an illegal or a criminal pulling the stuff in this article they would have been throwing everything at me including the kitchen sink and treating me better than our own citizens. Our streets are littered with homeless and druggies with many other aspects of life way out of control. Our country and government is definitely backwards and even bigger thieves than criminals themselves. Disgusting politicians and government. They have no clue about integrity or ethics and criminals know how to get atound the syztem. Meanwhile the typical citizens suffer in one respect or another.
How do all these people get away with this?? I know people with children, unemployed that can’t get any sort of help.!!