8 ms·

If you think that's bad: "California EDD admits paying as much as $31 billion in unemployment funds to criminals" https://abc7news.com/california-edd-unemploym

• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• PeterisP 5y ago
  I'd bet that at least a significant part of that fraud went not simply to criminals but to some state-level activity. $31 B is so huge that it is meaningful at very high levels (e.g. it's much larger than all the assistance, goods, weapons and financing provided to support Ukraine in the ongoing war), and for places like North Korea fraud and hacking is a large part of their foreign currency income (technically speaking, that would probably count as "export of services").
• pjc50 5y ago
  That sounds so large it has to be overstated? I'm always a little suspicious of claims of benefit fraud that aren't backed up by court cases. They're very easy to inflate. Someone loses their job, fills in a form incorrectly, gets paid, the error is discovered a year later: was there really fraudulent intent, or is it just the combination of means-testing and the difficulty of discovering someone's true circumstances?
  • dataflow 5y ago
    I don't know the answer, but some more info here might be interesting: https://www.edd.ca.gov/unemployment/pdf/fraud-info-sheet.pdf https://www.edd.ca.gov/unemployment/pdf/fraud-info-sheet.pdf
  • dmurray 5y ago
    On the other hand, 10-20% of successful claims being fraudulent sounds plausible: I could easily see there being one successful scammer for every ten genuine applicants, and the scammer claiming 1-2x as much on average. The number is mostly so large because it's 10% of an even bigger number, the amount CA pays in unemployment claims, which is not in dispute.
    • jltsiren 5y ago
      That 10-20% sounds extremely high. The usual estimates for benefit fraud in Finland are something like 0.1%.
      • weird-eye-issue 5y ago
        Sorry but how is Finland even close to relevant here?
        • AQuantized 5y ago
          It's another state providing similar benefits with a similar vector for fraud?
          • micromacrofoot 5y ago
            probably less of a vector because other benefits like healthcare are provided and financial compensation is a little less important?
            • messe 5y ago
              If you’re going to impose constraints like that you’ll have a hard time finding a comparison outside of the US.
              • weird-eye-issue 5y ago
                Why is a comparison outside the US beneficial other than outside some strawman argument?
              • micromacrofoot 5y ago
                I feel as though the US has an abundance of unique problems that make outside comparison completely useless.
          • weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  • ceroxylon 5y ago
    This guy[0] got caught because he made a song about it, but not before he got $1.2M in fraudulent claims. If a single person can net $1.2M, the $31B number starts to seem plausible. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niBFYeo2Ltk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niBFYeo2Ltk
  • ransom1538 5y ago
    Still doesn't explain inflation though. Wait...
• namdnay 5y ago
  not exactly the same thing - they're just listing the total fraudulent amount (or alleged fraudulent amount) for a massive program. it's not one hack
• sanp 5y ago
  Over the entire duration of the program, perhaps? If it is $31B over 40 odd years, then it is very believable.