[whyhateme]

Wonder why unemployment benefits program is broke? Read this....

Man pleads guilty to using undocumented immigrants to get $4.4 million in unemployment benefits - Monday, Oct. 31, 2011 | 3:32 p.m. - Las Vegas Sun

[Jukesgrrl]

This certainly is a shocking incident, but if you've ever collected Unemployment Insurance payments you'd find it hard to believe this type of fraud is common. After 36 years of uninterrupted employment, I collected UI when the company I worked for went bankrupt.

In my case it was easy to file since the company in question had notified the state agency of the personnel that were let go and eligible. But it certainly wasn't easy to continue collecting for a long period of time. During the time I was covered, my claim was investigated several times for propriety, which is, no doubt, how these perpetrators were caught. And anyone who thinks that unemployment checks are enough to live on needs to try -- mine would have covered my mortgage payment OR my other modest expenses. Not both. I would be homeless were it not for personal savings and assistance from my family.

I went to many UI-sponsored programs to help people re-gain employment and all the people I met there had legitimate, and sometimes very unfortunate, reasons for collecting this insurance. The real tragedy is that so many people in our country NEED this assistance. People with little work experience and people over the age of 45 find it especially difficult to re-gain employment once furloughed and it's hardly their fault. I hope you aren't implying that UI fraud is on such a large scale that it's the only reason the program is in trouble.

I'm very glad to know most of these ill-gotten gains were recovered. I hope Francisco Garcia gets a sentence designed to discourage other people from trying such a scheme.

[MSchu]

how the heck do you file for insurance so many times?

I mean 591 applications into 4.4 million is an average of of nearly 7500 in benefits...

[ScoopLV]

Originally Posted by MSchu

how the heck do you file for insurance so many times?

I mean 591 applications into 4.4 million is an average of of nearly 7500 in benefits...

And at $350 a month, that's almost two years of benefits per ill-gotten name and bogus social security number.

Yes, the whole thing stinks on ice. But he was caught, his assets seized and he faces 35 years in the slam.

Whenever there is "free money" to be had, you will find people of questionable morals trying to game the system. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in vapor-payments we've made to contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. No arrests there, though.

[MSchu]

I'd rather my money goes to black ops versus some arsehole with a betting fetish

[Buzz123]

I'm still scratching my head over how that could happen, having worked for ESD for almost 14 years. They were really afraid there would be a lot more fraud when on-line filing and telephone claims was first proposed, but they figured that the savings in paper alone would probably counter any fraud there might be.

It's important to note that they were caught, and it sounds like they got back most of the money. I warn people all the time that they will be audited, and if they break the rules, they will pay it all back.

I still don't see how they could file that many fraudulent claims and not have employers screaming to high heavens, or a million different red flags popping up. I hate to say it, but I'm wondering if they had inside help. It has happened, especially where immigrants are concerned. But most government employees watch for such things and report it. Most of the ones I worked with were honest to the extreme, but we did get rid of three bad apples that I knew of, mostly for petty stuff. Back when you filed in person at the office, and you took a number and waited, we had a rent-a-cop that was selling lower numbers to people so they didn't have to wait so long. There was one guy who collected the over-payments from people who had illegally received UI. For small amounts they wouldn't press charges as long as you made regular payments on it. He was having them make checks out to him personally, or bring him cash, and people did it. I think they might have mostly been immigrants who expect government workers to be crooks.

[Buzz123]

4.4 million divided by 591 claims = an average of $286 a week for the normal 26 weeks. But they were also collecting the extended benefits, so the weekly average was less than that. Good thing they weren't all getting the maximum benefit. It's close to $400 a week now. That would have been over $6 million without the extended benefits. So it could have gone as high as 12 million or so. No wonder it was so tempting.