The California Employment Development Department. (Courthouse News photo / Nick Cahill)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) Inmates and imposters ran up a $10 billion tab on California taxpayers’ dime during the opening stretches of the pandemic, taking advantage of the state’s dithering and deficient management of its massive unemployment benefit system, according to a new state audit.
With millions of new unemployment claims swamping the system, State Auditor Elaine Howle says the Employment Development Department buckled and issued payments for over four months without first verifying identities. As a result, the audit found that nearly 10% of the $111 billion in unemployment benefits the state paid as of December 2020 were fraudulent, including hundreds of millions to inmates.
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The California Employment Development Department. (Courthouse News photo / Nick Cahill)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) Nearly a year into a pandemic that gobbled up millions of jobs and caused double-digit jobless rates, California is still languishing through one of the largest and most costly bureaucratic failures in state history.
Despite sweeping changes promised by the governor last summer, the state’s fractured Employment Development Department, which left hundreds of thousands of freshly unemployed residents in the dark while sending billions to inmates and fraudsters, is far from fixed.
Still carrying a massive backlog of unemployment claims, a state audit released Tuesday found many of the department’s problems were self-inflicted and predicted it will continue hassling Californians long after the pandemic.