by Carl Hammersburg, SAS — December 22, 2020 .
Editor’s note: Carl Hammersburg manages the Government and Healthcare Risk and Fraud team at SAS, and has been with SAS since 2012. Prior to that, he spent 20 years in anti-fraud activities for Washington State’s exclusive workers’ comp insurer, the Department of Labor and Industries.
CARY – As the COVID-19 pandemic sent shockwaves through the economy, government agencies pushed out billions of dollars to bolster the economy and help citizens in need. While essential, these efforts exposed the system to widespread fraud, particularly related to unemployment insurance.
Identity theft is at the center of many of those nefarious activities. There is a common four-step sequence bad actors have found to be effective in taking the government for significant sums of money. Essentially starting from a data breach, bad actors sell personal information on the dark web, prop up fake identities and then use those identities to launch large government fraud campaigns. Criminal fraud rings are now commonly using stolen personal identity credentials to file claims and open accounts on another person’s behalf, then redirect the funds to themselves. In many cases, identity thieves sit on vast amounts of stolen credentials, waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them.

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