A person is tested for Covid-19 in Times Square as the Omicron coronavirus variant continues to spread in Manhattan, New York City, US, December 20, 2021. Photo :Reuters
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A person is tested for Covid-19 in Times Square as the Omicron coronavirus variant continues to spread in Manhattan, New York City, US, December 20, 2021. Photo :Reuters
Fraudsters likely stole $45.6 billion from the United States’ unemployment insurance program during the Covid-19 pandemic by applying tactics like using Social Security numbers of deceased individuals, a federal watchdog said on Thursday.
About a year ago, nearly $16 billion in potential fraud had been identified. The report issued Thursday by the inspector general for the US Labor Department identified “an increase of $29.6 billion in potentially fraudulent payments.”
The scammers had allegedly filed billions of dollars in unemployment claims in many states simultaneously while some of them got benefits using the identities of dead people and prisoners who were not eligible for aid. They also relied on suspicious emails that were hard to trace, the watchdog said in its report.
“We determined 205,766 Social Security numbers of deceased persons were used to file claims for UI (unemployment insurance) pandemic benefits,” the report added.
The United States’ jobless aid program started in 2020 in the early days of the coronavirus…
