EDD responds weeks after claims of fraud come to light
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
The California Employment Development Department is responding weeks after people reported getting mailed dozens of letters from the agency to their homes that were addressed to someone else.
Steve Smith got 34 letters from the EDD.
"They were all in our compartment. They all came all at once, and they were bounded with a rubber band," The problem is, Smith said, "I've never had an unemployment check in my life."
Smith is just the latest in a growing list of people to contact KCRA 3 Investigates about stacks of letters coming to their homes. All to the right address, but none of them were addressed to the people living at that home.
"If it's like two letters to a married couple, you know, a married couple each getting a letter or something like that, OK, the post office put them in the wrong box," Smith said. "Or if the address was across the street or something like that. OK, that's a mistake. But 34 letters? For 15 different people? From offices all up and down the state? There's something's going on."
For weeks, KCRA 3 has been trying to get information from EDD about how many fraudulent letters, how many fraudulent claims or even, how the state's unemployment department was handling what they called fraud.
On Thursday, the agency sent a news release, saying "perpetrators are often using stolen identity information from national and global data breaches, as well as exploiting expedited payment efforts in the federal PUA program."
EDD has outlined two steps to combat fraud: First, they are going to limit multiple claims at the same address. Second, to combat the fraud in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program, they will no longer allow automatic back-timing of unemployment benefits. Though this is something many ride-share drivers and contractors need to do when they lose work.
KCRA 3 brought the news release to Assemblymember Jim Patterson, R-Fresno. He started to laugh.
"Excuse me for laughing," Patterson said. "I just find this release absolutely astounding."
Patterson and other members of the legislature requested, and got, an emergency audit of EDD due to, what he called, a lack of transparency. He still has some big issues with the steps EDD outlined to stop fraud.
"First of all, this release admits to astounding incompetence, where they are now saying, 'Well, we're going to stop sending these multiple at the envelopes to the single address.' Well, where were they when the first 30, 40, 50, showed up weeks and months ago?" Patterson questioned.
Patterson also thinks preventing back-timing of PUA claims is the wrong approach, particularly since getting through to someone at the EDD call center for help can take hours — if they get through at all.
"They're basically putting it on the backs of the unemployed in the state of California to go figure out a way how they work their self through the minefield of incompetence at the EDD in order to get their unemployment dated back from when they were first unemployed," Patterson said.
As for Smith, the multiple checks and the money that may have been paid out concerned him.
"Absolutely it worries me," Smith said. "And take it a step further, I'm a state worker! They just cut my pay 10% .. And, if these are all checks going to people — come on, man!"
KCRA 3 Investigates has asked for weeks how many letters have been sent by EDD due to fraudulent claims and how much money may have been paid out as well. These are questions Patterson and other members of the California Legislature have as well. Patterson said even lawmakers can't get answers to those questions.
As for the letters, EDD wants people getting these to either mail them back to EDD at P.O. Box 826880, MIC 43, Sacramento, CA 94280-0225.
Homeowners can also write "return to sender on them" and put them in the mailbox.
Patterson has issues with that, saying fraudsters know the addresses and this just puts a target on homeowners who already got fraudulent mail.
EDD asks PUA applicants who need to back-time their unemployment to use the website or call the EDD call center.
https://www.kcra.com/article/edd-responds-weeks-after-claims-of-fraud-come-to-light/33986612