Criminals potentially stole an estimated $45.6 billion by making fraudulent unemployment insurance claims meant for people laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic, a government watchdog said, the Wall Street Journal reported. The new tally is nearly three times last summer’s estimate of over $16 billion in fraudulent payments. More than half of the potential fraud identified between March 2020 and April 2022 stemmed from individuals filing for benefits in multiple states. Fraudsters also used the Social Security numbers of people who were dead or in prison, as well as suspicious email addresses, the Labor Department’s inspector general’s office said in a report released Thursday. More than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes involving unemployment insurance fraud since March 2020, the report said. The inspector general’s office said it didn’t have access to the most current federal prisoner data for its report and focused on other high-risk areas of fraud. The pandemic unemployment insurance program, started in March 2020, gave those who lost their jobs an extra $600 a week in federal aid at first, which was later reduced to $300 a week. The supplemental benefit expired last year. More than $872 billion in pandemic aid has been paid out since March 2020, according to the inspector general’s office.
