Original title: epidemic chaos in the United States: unemployment benefit fraud is rampant, and $87 billion has been falsely claimed
Beijing, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) according to the Chinese website of the United States, a recently released report pointed out that as much as $87 billion of unemployment benefits distributed by the federal government may have been falsely claimed, most of which are due to fraud.
Reported that in the early days of COVID-19, the US Congress approved a large number of support projects to support those who lost their jobs, including increasing weekly unemployment benefits, extending the payment time and expanding the eligibility range. These benefits ended in early September this year.
The report released by the labor department points out that during this period, the federal government paid a total of $872 billion in benefits. However, unprecedented allocations have also led to a surge in theft and fraud. The report estimates that about 10% of the total benefits, or $87.2 billion, were eventually lost due to wrong payments, most of which were due to fraud. Others were blamed on procedural errors in the distribution process by state governments.
The report said that most of the fraud is related to organized crime. They buy personal identity information stolen from previous cyber attacks from hackers and apply for benefits in the name of these people.
Some experts pointed out that the state governments specifically responsible for the distribution of benefits were not prepared for such a large-scale fraud. Because these additional benefits are temporary, they have no time to build a welfare distribution system with protective measures.
The inspector general's office of the U.S. Department of labor pointed out that investigative work on unemployment benefits soared 1000 times during the epidemic. Such work now accounts for 92% of their daily work, compared with 13% before the epidemic.