The Employment Development Department on Thursday announced it has blocked a recent unemployment insurance fraud attempt involving crooks trying to steal hundreds of millions in benefits using paper and fax applications.
EDD is now mailing notices to claimants to separate the fraud attempts from any legitimate claims.
This latest scheme involved fraudsters flooding EDD with unemployment insurance claims filed by paper and fax — including as many as 47,000 potentially fraudulent claims earlier this month. EDD would normally expect to receive roughly 7,000 such applications in that time frame.
EDD did not pay the potentially fraudulent claims and its action prevented up to $560 million in potential unemployment insurance fraud.
“EDD’s tough new fraud filters thwart a constant stream of new fraud attempts, schemes and criminal tactics” said EDD Fraud Special Counsel McGregor Scott. “These criminals again tried to pierce the Department’s defenses but we stopped them dead in their tracks.”
The work of fraudsters in this case will likely slow claims for some paper-filing claimants as EDD separates the fraud attempts from legitimate claims.
EDD is mailing notices to all paper and fax benefit applicants to quickly identify any legitimate claimant and disqualify all fraudulent ones.
The mailed notices explain that an issue must be resolved before any benefits are paid, and include information about fraud reporting.
Any legitimate claimant who receives an EDD notice should respond...
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