Just three weeks after Connecticut unveiled a $60 million updated unemployment insurance benefits system, employers are noticing fraudulent claims.

Rich Siegel, president of Unemployment Tax Management Corp., a Wakefield, Massachusetts, business hired by employers to respond to questions about unemployment insurance claims and handle related matters, said Friday he has seen a “huge uptick in fraudulent claims” to illegally obtain money. Of 454 claims his company received from Connecticut clients for Monday through Thursday, about 167, or 37%, were fraudulent, he said.

The claims were fraudulent because they were submitted for workers who are still on the job, Siegel said. Unemployment insurance is available to workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

Before the revamped unemployment system was launched July 5, Siegel said he spotted just 1% of claims that were fraudulent.

Juliet Manalan, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor, said bad actors, particularly identity thieves, are testing the state’s unemployment benefits system, ReEmployCT because it’s new. ReEmployCT is catching fraud, not causing it, she said.

Fraudulent claims are a factor in all new state unemployment systems, Manalan said.

Siegel said fraudulent claims are not “one-off” cases of employees who lie about why they left their jobs or file claims in several states.

Instead, he said, criminal enterprises are engaging in fraud. They are probably based outside the U.S., have purchased...

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