50% of Unemployment Money went to Criminals in past Year

Not a typo.

If you pay taxes, this is your money hard at work


Half of the pandemic's unemployment money may have been stolen

The article also claims 70% of that which was stolen has landed overseas, in countries such as Nigeria, Russia and China

By the numbers: Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me, a service that tries to prevent this kind of fraud, tells Axios that America has lost more than $400 billion to fraudulent claims. As much as 50% of all unemployment monies might have been stolen, he says.

The Treasury Department declined to comment on these estimates.

In Vermont, in the month of April 70% of unemployment claims paid were to fraudsters. The all-wise government decided to stop requiring claimants to have to call in (too difficult or something?), but bigger and more wasteful government is what we will continue to see.

As many as 70 percent of the claims filed this month in Vermont are fraudulent, state Labor Commissioner Michael Harrington said Monday.

Source: SevenDays Article

a reply to: FamCore

But the children, or something.

As if the current leadership wanted the money to go to anyone else

The all-wise government

That is the biggest contradiction in terms in the history of the universe.

originally posted by: ColeYounger

The all-wise government

That is the biggest contradiction in terms in the history of the universe.

it was tongue in cheek my guy

originally posted by: FamCore

originally posted by: ColeYounger

The all-wise government

That is the biggest contradiction in terms in the history of the universe.

it was tongue in cheek my guy

Yea, I got that you were being sarcastic, and I thought it was great!
I immediately thought of the line: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

50% of Unemployment Money went to Criminals in past Year

So government absconded with it ?
Nothing new .

a reply to: FamCore

It's true. I work at a small bank in a small town and though thankfully it's not everybody, we have run into quite a few people who have perfectly fine jobs yet somehow someone was able to apply for unemployment under their names. Even one of my co-workers had the same thing happen to them.

Now I'm not sure if they'll get any of the funds if it's caught fast enough, but yeah, many people have been signed up for unemployment benefits yet received none.

originally posted by: Breakthestreak
As if the current leadership wanted the money to go to anyone else

If you read the article, it says, "Criminals may have stolen as much as half of the unemployment benefits the U.S. has been pumping out over the past year, some experts say."

That means that about half of the thievery took place under the former leadership. This doesn't look like a partisan issue.

I will guess that someone in the unemployment offices used the computer system and copied old files from 3 to 10 years ago and sold them to criminal groups. i will bet the old files would be worth at least $50 each.

and 5000 files would be worth $250.000 a lot of money to a lowly office worker.

Or a lot of states have had their systems hacked.

OK, here's a little info for you all.

1. If you are a US Citizen and paid taxes and filed with the IRS up till you had no income coming in, live overseas, yes, you got a 1400 hundred dollar check . ( if active with the IRS, then you'd have the funds into your bank account.

2. Setting up a fake account within a foreign bank is almost impossible these days because if you get money sent from the US it is going usually through an Embassy account that they set up for you. Social Security or Disability, I don't know about Military retirement overseas accounts.

3. I you don't have a green card statist and live overseas most likely YOU WON"T get the checks. I know of NO ONE who has.

The report on this doesn't make sense to me, why, if they know this then they can find the fraud involved.

Seriously people , try to open up an overseas bank account without a valid passport, YOU CAN'T .

a reply to: FamCore

The government sent me $5,800 unemployment money. In 10 years or so, they'll ask for it back.

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: FamCore

The government sent me $5,800 unemployment money. In 10 years or so, they'll ask for it back.

really

How is this possible?

No, it doesn't require some underpaid government employee getting paid off by a criminal element for confidential employment records (internal security systems would flag an employee accessing an unusual number of worker records).

How many of you have your taxes prepared every year?

Do any of you recall the security breaches that occurred several years ago that involved Intuit-sourced tax preparation software; software that was used by 80 - 90% of the CPA's and independent tax preparers in the country?


Before I retired, I used to work for my State's tax agency. Around 2016/2017 we began to see an enormous number of "ghost" returns: Federal and the accompanying State personal income tax returns that appeared completely legit, right down to the taxpayer's SSN, their employer's name, address, FEIN,

AND the correct identification codes for the tax preparer!

The only thing that alerted our fraud systems to something going on is the number of calls we began receiving from taxpayers who were claiming to be receiving refunds for tax returns they had not yet filed.

Very quiet investigations led to the discovery that hackers had breached the software packages used by professional tax services at the publisher (Intuit) level; they thus had full access to every return thousands of professionals across the nation had filed that year.

The source of the hack was never, to my knowledge, apprehended.

With that level of knowledge in their back pocket,

Is it really surprising that when an opportunity like the COVID19 employment upheaval hit, crooks jumped at the chance to whip out the records they had hacked and use them once again?

a reply to: FamCore

The hackers are :

When the first tranches of COVID BUX, oh pardon me, COVID stimulus went out, we were told by our dear media allies that it made sense for the BigBanks (tm) to administer the COVID BUX payments to US citizens, as they already have "payment infrastructure" set up, and most anyone not strictly operating on a paper money basis (starting to look better and better) has account services through BigBanks (tm).

That's the moment I realized that a significant portion of COVID BUX were destined to end up in deep, dark fiscal black holes, never to reach the intended recipients, i.e. US citizens.

Passing stimulus money from Uncle Sam to John Q. Public, by way of BigBanks (tm), is 100% guaranteed to end up with large chunks of missing funds. I like to make the analogy of trying to bring a gallon of water to your neighbor 50 yards up the street, but all you have is a pasta cullender to carry the water.

I have already written about the shenanigans of the BigBanks (tm) with the earlier rounds of COVID BUX payments in another thread.

The biggest set of criminals in on the stimulus theft are the ones trusted by the government to disperse the funds out to the American people.