Dan Walters: EDD a Titanic-level disaster
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“Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” is an overworked cliché, but it certainly applies to California’s Employment Development Department.
The name itself is a farce. There’s no evidence that EDD ever developed any jobs, other than employing thousands of bureaucrats to pay out unemployment insurance benefits and that’s been a titanic disaster.
This week, EDD suspended payments to many Californians in its latest effort to deal with massive fraud that erupted when Congress pumped many billions of dollars into the unemployment insurance system for workers who lost jobs due to COVID-19.
Millions in California coronavirus jobless benefits sent to out-of-state prisoners [Los Angeles Times :: BC-CALIF-BENEFITS-FRAUD:LA]
LOS ANGELES In the latest revelation of potential criminal fraud involving California jobless benefits, an analysis has found that more than $42 million in claims went to out-of-state prison and jail inmates, giving more clarity to what officials now estimate could be $4 billion in scammed coronavirus relief funds.
A large number of Florida inmates, including a man sentenced to 20 years for second-degree murder, are among the thousands of out-of-state prisoners who have allegedly received California pandemic unemployment benefits, according to a December analysis commissioned by the state Employment Development Department and reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.
Listen 11 min MORE California’s unemployment numbers are falling, but they’re well above pre-pandemic levels. Photo courtesy of the State of California.
Vin Olefer has been out of a job since last March. And even though they qualify for unemployment benefits, Olefer says they’re still waiting for a check.
“It makes you want to give up,” says Olefer, a student at Cal State Long Beach who uses they/them pronouns. “This is one of the many ways I think people are being left behind right now.”
Olefer is among the hundreds of thousands of California workers who are jobless, qualify for unemployment benefits and have applied, but still have not received their money, according to data from the California Employment Development Department (EDD).
The new total is nearly three times the $140 million in claim payments estimated last week by a group of California DAs and a federal prosecutor.
The analysis identified inmates receiving California benefits in other states, including Nevada, Illinois and South Carolina. Prison officials in Nevada and Illinois did not immediately comment on the allegations, but South Carolina Department of Corrections spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said her department had “not been notified by California authorities or anyone that any of our inmates are involved in this.”
Officials with the district attorney’s offices in Clark County and Washoe County in Nevada said that any allegations of inmate fraud allegations would be handled by Nevada’s attorney general’s office.