{"id":1820866,"date":"2023-01-23T16:49:41","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T21:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1820866"},"modified":"2023-01-23T16:53:23","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T21:53:23","slug":"fraudulent-lockdown-era-unemployment-payments-may-amount-to-60-billion-government-watchdog-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/fraudulent-lockdown-era-unemployment-payments-may-amount-to-60-billion-government-watchdog-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Fraudulent Lockdown-Era Unemployment Payments May Amount To $60 Billion, Government Watchdog Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffraudulent-lockdown-era-unemployment-payments-may-amount-to-60-billion-government-watchdog-says%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1820866&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dailywire.com\/topic\/fraud\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fraudsters<\/a> It is possible that the thieves may have taken up to $60 billion from various sources. <a href=\"http:\/\/dailywire.com\/topic\/unemployment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">unemployment<\/a> By legislation, insurance programs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/lockdowns\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lockdown<\/a>According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gao.gov\/assets\/gao-23-105523.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report<\/a> The Government Accountability Office.<\/p>\n<p>The state workforce agencies are responsible for managing unemployment programs and have reported $4.3 billion in fraud between April 2020 &#8211; June 2022. Another measure of fraud is the potential for fraud in cases flagged as such by the Labor Department. This could lead to $45 billion in fraudulent payments from March 2020 through April 2022. Extrapolating another low-bound estimate by the agency, which stated that at least 7.6% regular unemployment insurance payments were fraudulently made, would lead to a conservative estimate of $60 trillion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCurrent measures and estimates do not reflect the full extent of fraud, but they do provide important insights on fraud risks,\u201d According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gao.gov\/blog\/how-prevalent-fraud-federal-programs-we-take-look-focusing-unemployment-insurance-oversight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">post<\/a> The Government Accountability Office. \u201cAnd while fraud risks increased as a result of the pandemic, some will remain long after if not addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Between April 2020 and September 2022, $878 billion was spent on all unemployment insurance programs. \u201cThe unprecedented demand for benefits and the need to implement the new programs quickly increased the risk of financial fraud,\u201d The agency did not stop.<\/p>\n<p>The Department of Justice has been trying to recover fraudulently obtained taxpayer money. One example cited by the report noted a former state workforce agency employee who used others\u2019 identities to submit nearly 200 fraudulent applications; the individual was ordered to pay $4.3 million in restitution and will spend over five years in prison. An individual submitted 300 applications using stolen identities. He was sentenced to more than three years imprisonment after he paid $1.6 million.<\/p>\n<p>A rapper is another example of fraud in unemployment insurance. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/lamborghinis-rappers-and-the-new-york-jets-the-4-craziest-examples-of-covid-stimulus-fraud\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">boasted<\/a> The music video features his scheme, along with several former and current IRS employees. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/current-former-irs-employees-took-thousands-in-fraudulent-covid-relief-spent-it-on-gucci-a-mercedes-and-trips-to-vegas-report\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">abused<\/a> They can use their position to access the funds.<\/p>\n<p>Wider numbers of economic stimulus funds misappropriated indicate that there is a higher percentage of resources lost. The Labor Department <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pandemicoversight.gov\/spotlight\/unemployment-insurance-fraud#:~:text=The%20Department%20of%20Labor&#039;s%20Office,work%2C%20that%20amount%20will%20increase.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimates<\/a> The $163 billion in unemployed insurance benefits \u201ccould be improper, with a significant portion being attributed to fraud.\u201d Blake Hall, ID.me CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/shock-half-of-covid-19-unemployment-funds-may-have-gone-to-scammers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">predicted<\/a> The sum of $400 billion (or half the amount of unemployment money) was ultimately stolen.<\/p>\n<p>Multiple reports were issued by House Republicans in the Ways and Means Committee <a href=\"https:\/\/waysandmeans.house.gov\/republican-leaders-request-hearing-on-unemployment-insurance-fraud\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">requests<\/a> For hearings on fraud in the last two years, Democrats have consistently <a href=\"https:\/\/waysandmeans.house.gov\/democrats-vote-to-blatantly-ignore-greatest-theft-of-american-tax-dollars-in-history\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">blocked<\/a> The legislators say that the lawmakers have accepted the request to investigate the extent of fraud.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmerican families, whose wages have eroded under President Biden\u2019s inflation crisis, have watched as hundreds of billions of their hard-earned tax dollars were lost to criminal activity and fraud because Democrats refused to acknowledge the problem and repeatedly rejected Republican efforts to put basic safeguards in place to protect against this activity,\u201d Jason Smith, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (R-MO), stated in a statement to The Daily Wire. \u201cCongressional Democrats walked away from their oversight responsibilities of getting to the bottom of how this happened, what they could do to prevent it, and even how much has fully been lost, leaving criminals to profit off the backs of taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fraudsters may have stolen as much as $60 billion from the various unemployment insurance programs enacted by lockdown-era stimulus bills, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. State workforce agencies, which are responsible for administering unemployment programs, have officially reported $4.3 billion of fraud between April 2020 and June 2022. Another fraud measure, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":1820869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[11912,4484,16169,5045,16168,5398,4846,6056],"class_list":["post-1820866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire","tag-11912","tag-billion","tag-fraudulent","tag-government","tag-lockdown-era","tag-payments","tag-unemployment","tag-watchdog"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1820866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1820869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1820866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1820866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1820866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}