California COVID relief results in $2 BILLION in fraudulent claims

A report recently put out by the Bank of America indicated that there could be as many as 640,000 fraudulent accounts on the system.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the unemployment claims were filed and filled with debit cards people can use to access their benefits, but that some addresses received multiple cards, to the tune of hundreds.

According to the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), the report found that multiple unemployment debit cards had been sent to a single address. In fact, in many cases, over a hundred and even hundreds of cards had been sent to the same address.

This comes on the heels of a recent revelation that California inmates have also been applying for and possibly receiving assistance due to the pandemic while still being incarcerated, despite their not being eligible for unemployment benefits while in prison. This money often winds up in the hands of organized criminal organizations.

The inmates may have received collectively up to $400 million or more in fraudulent benefits.

Government bailout programs for individuals whose jobs were lost when the government shut down their workplaces had a very low bar for enrollment and receipt of funds. While this was intended to provide relief to those who found themselves without work through no fault of their own, it has resulted in fraud across the nation.

Washington State also had a rather low bar for unemployment claims, and ended up sending millions to a Nigerian scammer.