Roanoke Times (Roanoke, VA)
RICHMOND - After investigating more than 330,000 cases of potential fraud in payment of unemployment claims, the Virginia Employment Commission has confirmed that it has paid out $1.6 billion to people who used someone else's identity to gain public benefits.
Virginia Employment Commissioner Carrie Roth had told legislators in August that potential fraud claims could reach that level, but she said Monday that the beleaguered agency has paid out that amount in cases of identity theft, while blocking $1 billion in additional benefits to people using false identities. The state has worked to separate true and false claims in a flood of requests for unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The ones we can prosecute, we will prosecute," Roth said in an interview.
As for the federal and state dollars already spent, she said, "Some of it we'll be able to recover ... a lot of it we won't get back."
The VEC's struggles remain an urgent concern for state legislators, who have themselves been flooded with calls and emails from frustrated and desperate people seeking unemployment benefits, as well as employers who pay into the state unemployment trust fund. VEC faces a backlog of almost 95,000 appeals in unemployment insurance cases, both by the people who've lost their jobs and employers who say benefits are unwarranted in some cases.
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