People who who leave the unemployment rolls and find full-time jobs by the end of June will be eligible for more than a thousand dollars from the state.
Collateral damage in a war against scammers
Until the pandemic, it was simpler to get unemployment benefits in Colorado and elsewhere. State security systems generally asked people to fill out a form with their personal information facts like their date of birth and their social security number to prove who they were. That was easy enough for many people.
But the last year has revealed that approach to be obsolete as scammers have used hordes of stolen identities to raid unemployment systems across the country, syphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims. In response, Colorado hired ID.me, which uses facial recognition to match people to their government documents, among other strategies. Other states are using other vendors and methods a necessary step, they said, to stop the bleeding.