The Doki Small Unemployment Fraud, which the government has discovered a few years ago
One problem: Federal investigators have discovered that fraud, which was a few years ago and larger, seems to be the same fraud.
Musk-owned social media website announced in an article on X last week that “a preliminary investigation of unemployment insurance claims since 2020” found that 24,500 people over 115 claimed $59 million in benefits; 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5 raised $254 million; 9,700 people had their next 15 years of birthdays and received $69 million from the government.
The tweet sparked predictable partisan reactions of suspicion or cheer, including from Musk himself, who said his team found “so crazy” that he rereaded several times before sinking.
“Another incredible discovery,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-Deremer marveled at a cabinet meeting last week, when he repeated the Doge’s discovery to President Donald Trump.
Chavez-Deremer’s narrative of the alleged fraud, including benefits offered by the unborn child, laughed in the cabinet room, and Trump’s own reaction. “These numbers are really bad,” he said. But Chavez-Deremer doesn’t have to go further than the inspector general’s office of her own department, finding that the type of federal workers has reported on this fraud.
“They are trying to spin this narrative, ‘Oh, the government is inefficient, the government is stupid, they are grabbing something the government is not grabbing,” said Michele Evermore, who is engaged in unemployment at the U.S. Department of Labor during the administration of former President Joe Biden. “They find that the fraud is marked as fraud and say they find it is fraud.”
The Social Security Act of 1935 proposed unemployment rates in federal law, but allowed states to establish systems to impose unemployment taxes, process applications and obtain support.
While states have almost complete control over their own unemployment system, the special relief program (most notably expanded benefits The widespread expansion of benefits was given at the beginning of the COVID pandemic – injected more direct federal participation and injected a large number of new beneficiaries into the system.
Stephen Wandner, an economist at the National Academy of Social Insurance, said that during the regular period, the state’s unemployment system performed “very good, not very good, bad.” Wanderer said that with the joint attack on the economy and creating new claims that states cannot cope with, it is more “very scary.”
Trump signed off on March 27, 2020 to the unemployment relief, becoming a fraud magnet from the outset. About two weeks later, in a memo to state officials, the Department of Labor warned that the expanded benefits made the unemployment program “a target of fraud, with a large number of impostors claiming stolen or synthetic identities.”
The memorandum provides options for those who attempt to protect identity theft to fraudulently collect unemployment benefits. To keep a record of fraud, but to prevent innocent people from being linked to fraud, states can make “false claims”, the memorandum suggests.
Those “false claims” resulted in records of checks being obtained by young children and centenarians. The Labor Department’s inspector general filed about 4,895 unemployment claims against people over 100 between March 2020 and April 2022, but another memorandum explained that the documents originated from states changing dates of birth to protect people using their identities.
The 2023 memorandum said: “Many claims identified … are not payments to individuals over 100 years of age, but rather ‘false records’ of previously determined fraudulent claims.”
A Labor Department spokesman did not answer questions about Musk’s discovery, while Doge did not provide details on how to find the alleged fraud or whether to copy what had been found.
Although the ostensibly time frame is longer than the time frame of federal investigators, it estimates only $382 million in fake unemployment claims, a small percentage of what investigators have already realized.
The Labor Department said in 2022 that alleged common unemployment fraud totaled more than $45 billion. The Government Accountability Office later said the situation was even worse, possibly $100 billion to $135 billion.
“I don’t think it’s news for anyone,” said Amy Traub, an unemployment expert at the National Employment Law Project. “It has been widely reported. There have been multiple Congressional hearings.”
If Doge’s latest allegations are full of a familiar atmosphere, it’s because of their previous discoveries about Social Security payments to the deceased and incredible seniors. These are false claims.
Even if fraud occurs, this makes Doge a messenger of imperfection, just like an unemployment claim.
Jessica Reidl, a senior fellow at the Conservative Think Tank of Manhattan College, is a fiscal conservative who advocates for the federal waste roots, and she has written 600 articles on the subject. Although she believes unemployment insurance fraud is prevalent, it is difficult for her to accept any of Doge’s findings, which she says is invalid and may be illegal.
“I became skeptical when Dorge said the impossible elderly gathered a lot of joblessness,” Red said. “In that field, the Governor has no good record.”
Trab said unemployment fraud in the pandemic era has caused states to implement new security measures. She questioned why Musk’s team touted old fraud, just like new ones.
“Business leaders and economists warn that it is natural to consider unemployment,” Traub said. “This is an attack on the image of a crucial program, perhaps undermining public support for unemployment insurance when it is no longer important.”
