Thousands of Fraudulent Claims Filed For Unemployment in Michigan
I have been fortunate and only had to file for unemployment a few times in my life. I was also lucky enough to find a job pretty quick. If unemployment was not there, I am not sure what I would have done. We do pay into it when we are working as well as our employers.
So it is a shame when someone is getting it fraudulently. That money should go to people that are struggling to find a job and feed their family. Many need need it to survive, especially in these tough times.
According to fox47news.com, Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency has seen a huge increase in new pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims that are most likely filed by criminals. Check this out. Since April 2nd, about 100,000 claims have been filed and were fraudulent.
Because of the additional fraud protections we developed last year at the onset of these coordinated attacks on state unemployment agencies, these fraudulent claims have been stopped and no payments have been sent,” said Liza Estlund Olson, acting director of the Unemployment Insurance Agency, in a press release. “We continue to be vigilant in protecting the integrity of the system and the benefits for those who rightfully deserve them.
If they are caught, and many of them are, they could possibly end up in jail and have to pay it all back with penalties and fines.
These bogus claims are filed using stolen, or fraudulent personal information. The good news is unemployment claims in general are down quite a bit in the past weeks. Check this out from an earlier post on unemployment.