Fraudulent unemployment payments doled out during COVID up to $135B

[Kamaji]

Fraudulent unemployment payments doled out during COVID up to $135B: watchdog

By Victor Nava
Published Sep. 12, 2023

The amount of fraudulent unemployment payments doled out during the pandemic was likely between $100 billion and $135 billion, accounting for up to 15% of the total benefits issued between April 2020 through May 2023, according to a government watchdog.

The study doubles the original Government Accountability Office’s estimate provided to the House Ways and Means Committee in February.

And the actual level of fraud could be even higher, despite more than a billion dollars allocated to states by the Biden administration for unemployment fraud prevention, detection, investigation and recovery.

“The full extent of [unemployment] fraud during the pandemic will likely never be known with certainty,” the GAO said in a report released Tuesday.

States have reported recovering only about $6.8 billion in pandemic-era unemployment overpayments, including $1.2 billion in fraudulent payments – or less than 1% of the staggering potential fraud total estimated by GAO.

“The unprecedented demand for [unemployment] benefits and the urgency with which states implemented the new programs during the pandemic increased the risk of improper payments, including, but not limited to, those due to fraud,” the report notes.

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2023/09/12/fraudulent-unemployment-payments-doled-out-during-covid-up-to-135b-watchdog/

[Kamaji]