Department of Labor IG suspects more than $45B in fraudulent UI claims handed out during pandemic - Fox Business

The Department of Labor Inspector General reported it suspects at least $45 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance claims have been handed out since March 2020. .

In June 2021, the OIG reported it found roughly $16 billion in potentially fraudulent claims.

The claims resulted from people using social security numbers to file for unemployment insurance in multiple states, on the behalf of dead people, using suspicious email accounts and from federal prisoners.

Since that report, the OIG has identified $29.6 billion more in potentially fraudulent claims, according to a Sept.

While the office has been continuing to monitor potentially fraudulent claims going out to the four problem areas it identified in June, it has not received data from the Department of Justice or Bureau of Prisons to update its estimates of fraudulent claims being paid to federal prisoners. 

Between March 2020 and April 2022, the OIG found people used 991,793 Social Security numbers in multiple states to file for $28.9 million in benefits

Over the same time period, people used 205,766 Social Security numbers to file for $139.4 million in benefits, and people used 1,714,188 Social Security numbers to file for $16.2 billion in benefits

Though it doesn’t have updated figures, the OIG reported in June that Social Security numbers of potentially ineligible federal prisoners were used to file claims for $267.3 million.