In article <x6ATJ.75851$%uX7.32944@fx38.iad>
<governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Everybody say, "THANKS DEMOCRATS!" "YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!"
>

The Labor Department inspector general noted the Biden
administration keeps slow-walking efforts to help fight fraud.

Haley Joel Osment sees dead people. Government officials give
them welfare benefits.

That conclusion comes from a report recently released by the
Labor Department�s inspector general, providing an update on its
investigations of pandemic-related unemployment fraud.
Unfortunately, the document provides only the tip of the
proverbial iceberg, both in identifying the scope of the problem
and holding fraudsters to account.

$46 Billion Down the Drain
The inspector general report updated earlier documents
quantifying the scope of potentially fraudulent unemployment
insurance payments made during the pandemic. Specifically, the
office examined four types of potential fraud: claims 1) filed
in multiple states; 2) made in the name of deceased individuals;
3) using suspicious email accounts; or 4) filed by federal
prisoners.

The chart below demonstrates the growth in potentially
fraudulent unemployment insurance payments made since March 2020.

The $46 billion figure underestimates the potential fraud, for
several reasons. For instance, investigators did not have
current data on federal prisoners, so could not update last
year�s estimate of suspicious payments in this category. The
total also excludes potential fraud not included in one of the
four categories � from claims made by state prisoners to those
with less obvious red flags.

Little Accountability for Fraudsters
A press release accompanying the report hinted at the massive
nature of the fraud. A few sentences discussed efforts to hold
scammers to account:

With less than 140 criminal investigators, the [inspector
general] leveraged data analytics to direct its limited
resources to those matters that pose the greatest risk to the
[unemployment insurance] program. The [inspector general] is
focusing on large-scale identity theft schemes involving
multiple victims and organized criminal groups, including street
gangs.

In other words, if someone doesn�t belong to a gang, or �only�
submitted fraudulent claims for a few thousand dollars (or even
tens of thousands of dollars), he�s not going to get prosecuted.

The press release attempted to praise prosecutors for charging
1,000 individuals, and obtaining convictions that �have resulted
in more than 7,000 months� � about 583 years � �of
incarceration.� But given that investigators identified nearly
$46 billion in fraud, the amount of accountability seems
massively outweighed by the scale of the original crimes.

Government Empowering Scammers
The fraud in the Covid unemployment spending should surprise no
one. The antiquated systems many states use to administer
unemployment benefits (the program operates as a state-federal
partnership) enabled scammers to game the system, even as
individuals legitimately harmed by government lockdowns in 2020
struggled to navigate the stifling bureaucracy and claim
benefits.

Even now, federal officials have yet to fully cooperate with
efforts to hold people to account, albeit after the fact, for
their criminal conduct. The inspector general noted that its
office has the ability to require that state workforce agencies
(which administer unemployment benefits) provide data and
information relevant to anti-fraud efforts � but only on a
temporary basis.

During the State of the Union address this March, the Biden
administration made a big show out of appointing a special
prosecutor to tackle Covid spending fraud. Yet the Labor
Department inspector general noted that the same Biden
administration continues to slow-walk efforts that would give
the IG the information it needs to fight fraud.

Costly Waste
Two other points bear repeating. First, the Covid-era
unemployment benefits at issue in the report paid many
individuals more to stay home than they would have made working.
That dynamic not only constituted bad policy by encouraging
unemployment but also led to practical failures of
implementation by encouraging fraud and scams.

Second, the American people will bear the costs of this wasteful
�Covid spending� � on fraudulent unemployment benefits and much
else � for decades to come, as our debt continues to rise to
unsustainable levels. From outright scams to spending on things
like ski areas and baseball stadiums, the money frittered away
on frivolous projects over the past two years will come at a
steep price to the next generation.

Democrats may have gotten more votes from their big-spending
blowout, but our children and grandchildren will get stuck with
the bill.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/03/inspector-general-46-
billion-in-covid-unemployment-subsidies-probably-went-to-
fraudsters/