An application for a warrant to seize property subject to forfeiture that was filed in federal court last month offers an instructive look at how a pair of.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KGO) A California State Assembly budget subcommittee held a hearing Tuesday with California s EDD and its banking partner, Bank of America, to gain clarity on the massive fraud plaguing the program.
Faiz Ahmad, Head of Global Transaction Services at Bank of America, noted in his opening remarks that unemployment insurance fraud is nationwide, and not unique to California. The size and scale of the California program attracted substantial fraud, including criminals who are fraudulently attempting to claim benefits. It is our assessment that there is sophisticated criminal network activity involved in this, as is being assessed by a third party specialist as well, said Ahmad.
How did California handle its unemployment crisis compared to other states? The amount of unemployment funds stolen from California taxpayers in 2020 may total more than $8 billion four times higher than estimated just one month ago.
A Bank of America representative told him: There was no investigation done because once we received the claim, EDD gets the alert there is a claim going on. They automatically close it, saying there is fraud risk, fraud risk so they don t give us time to actually work the claim.
The Bank of America representative offered multiple times during the call to reopen the claim; still Bolik was frustrated. On the recording, he attempts to clarify what he s hearing.
A Central Valley Congressman is reaching out to the IRS based on an ongoing KCRA Investigation into fraudulent claims with the California Employment Development Department or EDD.
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) 7 On Your Side has been helping scores of unemployed workers whose benefits were drained by scammers - and Bank of America rejected their claims to be reimbursed for the fraud.
Now, a class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Friday claims Bank of America failed to stop scammers from stealing money off EDD debit cards of struggling workers.
The suit,
Yick v. Bank of America, says Bank of America never secured the cards with chip technology, and failed to prevent data breaches to secure millions in unemployment benefits.
It also claims the bank failed to reimburse victims as required by the EDD contract, and left them on hold for hours as they tried to file claims.