When Ashleigh King of Reno lost her job Feb. 24, she went online to apply for Nevada unemployment insurance payments, but the state website wouldn’t let her file a claim.
After days of relentlessly trying to reach someone at the Nevada Division of Employment and Rehabilitation (DETR), she was told that someone in Las Vegas was already collecting benefits under an inaccurate version of her name, but using her real Social Security number.
“It was frustrating trying to get information,” said King, a medical assistant. “The phone lines were on permanent hold… When I did get through, they wanted me to verify my address in Las Vegas. I said ‘no, I’m in Reno.’ They couldn’t confirm that with my file and they hung up on me. I kept calling. I finally got through on one number and they said call the fraud department. You can’t get through there, either.”
Fraud on an industrial scale
King reached out to the governor’s office and eventually got a call back from DETR. “They said they will investigate the fraudulent claim. They don’t know how long that will take. I can’t apply and there’s no estimate when I can apply.” She wasn’t told when the fraudster filed the bogus claim, but she said she assumes it was for the pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA) program, which began in March.
The federal PUA program allows freelancers, independent contractors and gig workers to apply for benefits. Because those claimants don’t have individual employers who can verify their work history, a door opened for massive fraud. Armed with stolen Social Security numbers, fake identification documents and made-up employment histories, criminals easily hoodwinked unemployment insurance systems in every state.
The U.S. Labor Department Inspector General estimated that during the pandemic, nationwide, scammers using stolen Social Security numbers have so far cost taxpayers more than $60 billion in false claims. In some cases, imposters used the same information to file claims in multiple states.
Prior to the pandemic, Nevada’s unemployment office served about 20,000 claimants. By June, when the state temporarily stopped processing PUA claims due to an explosion of fraud attempts, DETR was submerged under 813,800 claims, including 344,680 filed under the new program. The tidal wave of cases overwhelmed the agency, creating a backlog of hundreds of thousands of benefit applications.
State system goes haywire
DETR has reported that since the beginning of the pandemic it has paid benefits to about 300,000 Nevadans weekly and is catching up with unprocessed claims and appeals. Still, tens of thousands of claimants’ cases remain in limbo. Every day, unemployed Nevadans desperately try to navigate the state’s glitch-prone and often off-line computer system. They also attempt calling the agency on phone numbers that rarely connect to a human, even after hours on hold.
Several unofficial unemployment assistance sites have sprung up on social media, including Unemployment Nevada Information and Help, which has more than 58,000 members on Facebook. Those pages allow claimants to help each other deal with the state’s complex system and are bulletin boards for a litany of complaints from Nevadans waiting for their claims or appeals to be processed. The sites also are a target of scammers, who post links to phony DETR or third-party websites designed to steal the identities of people who already have their backs against a wall.
DETR: no time for answers
In a reply to emails from the Reno News & Review, a DETR official wrote that the agency is “experiencing a time of high-volume communication” and so was unable to respond to the publication’s questions within the five business days preceding the publication of this story. It’s unknown how much taxpayer money has been lost in paying fraudulent Nevada unemployment claims during the pandemic. A report from a state task force, released on Jan. 27 and available as a downloadable PDF file, below, provides a glimpse of Nevada’s epidemic of fraud.
According to the report, an analysis of computer data revealed that imposters filed Nevada claims not only from within the state, but also from all over the country and from computers based in Europe.
In August, a security firm did a test run that identified 9,000 “questionable” claims, which were then held for validation. Of those, fewer than 90 proved to be legitimate claims. Another firm, ID.me, sent out 109,814 identity verification requests to people claiming benefits, but just 7,526 of those claimants could prove their identities. The other 102,288 cases were deemed to be bogus.
Unemployment claims fraud has become a billion-dollar industry during the pandemic, with its roots in years of computer-assisted identity theft that has resulted in a pool of millions of stolen IDs available to fraudsters. A RN&R sidebar to this story explains how those scams are conducted and how even small-time crooks can get an education in pulling off such frauds – and find the tools to do so – on what is known as the “Dark Web.”
Waiting for 7 months
According to the January strike force report, DETR has adopted new fraud-detection systems and both state and federal agencies are now investigating cases. Meanwhile, the victims of the imposters often find out that their identities have been stolen only after they file for benefits themselves. When that happens, their unemployment insurance applications are held hostage for weeks or months as DETR investigates the phony claims.
Thomas LaMontagne of Las Vegas, for example, was laid off on Aug. 6 after 20 years at his job as a steel worker in Henderson. He got online to file for unemployment benefits only to discover that someone pretending to be him had filed for benefits – from a computer located in Texas – on Aug. 5. He’s still waiting to file a claim while his case remains under investigation.
“I emailed, got online and started calling at 7:59 in the morning and I didn’t get hold of anyone at DETR until December,” he said. “I’ve sent DETR photos of my Social Security card and driver’s license… I’ve worked my whole life and never had to file for unemployment before. Now, the first time I need it, I can’t even file the claim.”
On hold for hours
LaMontage said when he finally got through to DETR in December he was given what later turned out to be incorrect information. In follow-up calls, he said, he waited on hold for hours and on rare occasions when a call was answered, he got disconnected. Finally, on March 1, he spoke to an agency employee who confirmed that DETR had received the copies of his ID documents and told him that his case would be expedited.
“She said she would try to speed things up,” LaMontage said. “Hopefully, I’ll hear something in a week or two.” In the meantime, he has been drawing on his 401K retirement funds to meet living expenses. “Thank God I have the option to do that,” he said. “I know a lot of people don’t.”
Sally Montoya of Reno has been waiting for three months for word about her DETR fraud case, she said, and has had to borrow money from friends and family to pay rent and buy food. “I’ve given up trying to call,” she said. “You get a recording that you are 21st in line or whatever and an hour later that recording is still playing and you still have 21 people in front of you.”
‘They know that I’m me’
Montoya said she was laid off from her food-service job in December and was unable to file an unemployment claim online because someone using her Social Security number already was in the system. She sent copies of her identification documents to the agency, but didn’t get any details about the imposter’s claim.
“I’m me and they know that I’m me and this other person isn’t,” she said. “What more do they have to investigate? I know that they weren’t ready for (the pandemic); nobody was. It’s not my fault that someone scammed them using my name… I shouldn’t be punished for something I didn’t even know happened.”
Wrong name on fake claim
King, who was given some information about the fraudulent filing that is delaying her case, noted that the person who filed the claim used inaccurate information. King’s Social Security number was correct, but her first name was spelled wrong; the claim listed her maiden name, which hasn’t appeared on her driver’s license for five years; and the scammer gave her physical address as Las Vegas while she was employed in Reno.
She is frustrated by what she sees as DETR’s lackadaisical response to bogus claims.
“Nothing on that fake claim added up, but they paid it anyway,” King said. “I can understand that DETR needed extra help and they weren’t ready for the pandemic. But now they are screwing people by not giving them financial help when they need it.”
‘It doesn’t make sense’
When fraudulent claims are detected, the false data has to be expunged from DETR’s system before a legitimate claimant can file under the same Social Security number. That process is apparently what is holding up the payment of the legitimate claims, but that’s one of the questions that the agency told the RN&R it didn’t have time to answer.
King isn’t buying that excuse. Once the real holder of a Social Security number proves his or her identity, the information relating to the imposter’s case should be cleared as a matter of course and the legitimate claims process should proceed, she said.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” King said. “They can’t get my claim moving along when I can’t even file a claim. I’m just hoping it gets fixed sooner rather than later.”
I filed pua claim may 23rd and was approved than denied. Denied only first three weeks feb2 march 7 than for other program eligibility. I got denied regular unemployment and than approved again for pua in august. Yet nothing have received nothing Deter is full of glitches n problems that seem to benefit them only. Never other way around they were given millions to get staff to help, you can’t get help. I was approved, can’t appeal cuz its in my favor, but nothing.
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