Fraud Losses For Colorado Unemployment Dept. Spike; Scammers Estimated To Have Stolen $20 to $30 Million
CBS Denver 1 hr ago Syndicated Local – CBS Denver
DENVER (CBS4) – Five weeks after announcing scammers had pilfered about $6.5 million from the Colorado unemployment system during the pandemic, state unemployment administrators dramatically ratcheted that figure up. They say they now believe fraudsters got away with as much as $30 million since the pandemic began.
“This number will grow exponentially,” said Cher Haavind, Deputy Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Haavind and other CDLE officials spoke to CBS4 Tuesday afternoon after CBS4 learned of the increase in dollars fraudulently stolen from the agency over the last year and not recovered.
The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment offices in downtown Denver.
More than 200,000 people enrolled in Colorado’s unemployment system will have to verify their identities through an online platform operated by ID.me, a rapidly growing startup based in Virginia, to keep receiving benefits.
The change comes after the state has paid out untold millions of dollars in suspected counterfeit claims. The security upgrade, however, has caused headaches and delays for some legitimate beneficiaries.
The state has already rolled out the technology to smaller subsets of claimants, but it will require all unemployment users to sign up in the coming weeks.
Roth did not know either of the claimants and had never employed them.Â
âWhen this started, Iâm like, âWow, this will be easy to correct,ââ he said. âBoy, was I wrong.â
Roth spent upwards of 40 hours over the next couple of months sending emails and faxes and making phone calls in attempts to get the claims approvals reversed.
âI just followed the directions in the letters, calling the 800 number or the 303 number, and couldnât get through to anybody,â Roth said. âIâd be on hold for a long time, and then the call would get dropped.â
After many unsuccessful attempts to contact the department by phone, âI was finally able to get a fax through,â he said. âThen I got letters saying that because I didnât dispute it, itâs been approved.â
IU filers running into ID issues gjsentinel.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gjsentinel.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment has been flooded with fraudulent claims for unemployment insurance â more than 1.1 million claims have been flagged as possibly fraudulent since the start of 2020.Â
Bank employees and customers, like those in other industries, have been targeted by scammers who have used their identities to file false claims.Â
While many of these claims are now being caught by more sophisticated identification tools, many others result in great inconvenience for businesses and individuals and in millions of dollars in payments to scammers.Â
According to Jessica Smith, CDLE Division of Unemployment Insurance press secretary, scammers were successful in stealing $6,562,264 through fraudulent claims in 2020, but the department prevented more than $91 million in fraud losses.