{"id":48501,"date":"2021-02-16T15:37:01","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T22:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fraudsters-take-advantage-of-unemployment-benefits-during-pandemic\/"},"modified":"2021-02-16T22:37:01","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T22:37:01","slug":"fraudsters-take-advantage-of-unemployment-benefits-during-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fraudsters-take-advantage-of-unemployment-benefits-during-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Fraudsters take advantage of unemployment benefits during pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"La
La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office Deputy Reid Brubaker investigates a fraud case on Friday at the office. While many types of fraud remained steady through the coronavirus pandemic, unemployment fraud increased, officials say.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

As tax season rolls in, Colorado employers and employees might want to take a second look at unemployment insurance claims, fraud investigators say.<\/p>\n

Case rates for most types of fraud seemed to stay steady during the COVID-19 pandemic. But unemployment insurance fraud is an outlier. The state, like the nation, has seen a wave of fraudulent unemployment insurance claims \u2013 while trying to help legitimate claimants affected by the unsteady economy during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have some things that came up this past year that were not normal for us \u2013 that would be the unemployment fraud,\u201d said Lt. Luke Harrington with La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more cases coming across our table.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, massive federal relief money was rolling in to help millions of people filing for unemployment benefits.<\/p>\n

Since spring 2020, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment processed just more than 1 million valid unemployment insurance claims and paid out over $7 billion in legitimate unemployment insurance benefits, said Joe Barela, CDLE executive director.<\/p>\n

The goal was to limit the impacts from coronavirus-related mandatory shutdowns, closures and restrictions on businesses as the country tried to slow the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Means and opportunity<\/div>\n

But employers and employees also began receiving notifications about unemployment claims they hadn\u2019t made, Harrington said.<\/p>\n

The employee would report it to the Sheriff\u2019s Office and their employer, then the case would go to CDLE.<\/p>\n

In June, when CDLE expected to see slower unemployment claim rates, the numbers kept rising, said Jessica Hudgins Smith, spokeswoman with the CDLE Division of Unemployment Insurance, in an email to The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the division discovered that fraudulent claims were being filed.<\/p>\n

The division flagged nearly 1 million potentially fraudulent claims from the start of the pandemic to January. The potential loss was $97.7 million. The actual loss was $6.6 million, according to the division.<\/p>\n

Division staff members were buried. Employees were tracking down fraudulent claims individually and manually investigating them. Claimants faced a backlog in receiving benefits, Hudgins Smith said.<\/p>\n

In January, the state launched a new system for catching fraud, while automating the fraud reporting and claim filing processes. The improvements and additional staffing are helping the division cut down the backlog, she said.<\/p>\n

CDLE has a few hypotheses to explain the increase.<\/p>\n

Fraudsters, such as international criminal rings or one-off opportunists, had the means. Mass data breaches of recent years, like Equifax, Target and Adobe, have caused millions of individual records to become available on the dark web and other black market avenues, Barela said.<\/p>\n

They also had the opportunity. Federal relief programs are easier to target, and extra federal money going to weekly unemployment benefits might have encouraged fraudsters, Hudgins Smith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe this is a big reason why we began seeing the increase in fraud over the summer as well,\u201d Hudgins Smith said.<\/p>\n

But unemployment fraud isn\u2019t possible unless criminals have personal identifying information.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have been subjected to a fraudulent UI claim, that is because your personal identity was compromised through an unrelated previous data breach,\u201d Barela said in an op-ed. \u201cIf you haven\u2019t already done so, you will need to take independent action to protect your credit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office passed 51 unemployment fraud cases to CDLE in 2020, Harrington said. But as tax season approaches, he expects to see new fraudulent claims surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had more roll through since the beginning of this year, and we\u2019re seeing an uptick in the ones that actually have monetary value,\u201d Harrington said.<\/p>\n

Pandemic crime and what to do<\/div>\n

Unemployment claims aren\u2019t the only type of crime that became more popular with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Attorney General\u2019s Office prosecuted companies for making false or misleading claims about products such as hand sanitizer and face masks. Businesses got caught for overstating the reliability and accuracy of COVID-19 infection and immunity tests.<\/p>\n

In January, Attorney General Phil Weiser advised Coloradans to watch out for potential COVID-19 vaccine scams.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally, consumer complaints increased during the pandemic,\u201d said Lawrence Pacheco, spokesman for the Attorney General\u2019s Office. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a total of 2,960 complaints specifically related to the pandemic. Unwanted robocalls and refunds for airline tickets and concerts are the top complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing didn\u2019t change with the pandemic: the \u201crelentless\u201d phone scams ringing across the nation, Harrington said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re nonstop. A lot of people from all ages get caught up in it,\u201d Harrington said.<\/p>\n

\"One
One type of fraud is relentless: phone scams. La Plata County Sheriff&#x2019;s Office deputies often have hours to try to recover money lost to these scams.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In one scam, people will hear that there is a warrant for their arrest. They might even see a local number listed on their caller identification. In some cases, the number even matched those belonging to a sheriff\u2019s office or another local agency, Harrington said.<\/p>\n

But these are scams.<\/p>\n

In a local case, a scammer even met a resident in the parking lot of the Sheriff\u2019s Office to complete the scam.<\/p>\n

One person lost about $160,000 to scammers using a different scheme, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t get on it really, really quick, there\u2019s not a whole lot that can be done,\u201d Harrington said.<\/p>\n

To spot scams, people should keep an eye on their credit and avoid giving out personal information, he said. If it comes up, they should contact local agencies, banks and CDLE for unemployment insurance fraud.<\/p>\n

Overall, the Internal Revenue Service will never call people for money. The Sheriff\u2019s Office will never hold a warrant as ransom for you to either turn yourself in or give money, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suggest to everybody: You need to monitor your credit,\u201d Harrington said. \u201cDon\u2019t be giving out personal information. \u2026 If it doesn\u2019t sound right, most likely it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

smullane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

could unearth more fraudulent claims<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,168,13,28,1901,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-crime","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-sheriff","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48501"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}