BOSTON — As scammers continue to target the national unemployment system, the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) continues to work diligently to ensure the integrity of the system.
An alarming amount of people in Massachusetts applying for unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic have had issues with fraud, which delays the payment timeframe for families already struggling to get by.
Scammers who obtain stolen personal information from previous, unrelated commercial data breaches have attempted to file large numbers of illegitimate unemployment claims through the Massachusetts unemployment system.
In efforts to stop scammers from filing illegitimate unemployment claims, the DUA “to apply enhanced identity verification measures that may temporarily delay the payment timeframe for some unemployment claims in Massachusetts.”
Anyone who believes a fake unemployment claim has been filed in their name is urged to contact the DUA fraud contact form at mass.gov/unemployment-fraud or to call the DUA customer service department at 877-626-6800.
From March 8 through November 23, the DUA says a total of 1,428,450 unemployment claims were filed in the state, while only 1,149,691 claims were eligible to be paid. A total of 187,160 claims were denied and 20,614 are still pending.
Between April 16 and November 23, a total of 880,115 MA residents applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), but only 285,942 claims were eligible to be paid, meaning the state denied 535,931 claims. Currently, 32,230 appeals are pending.
As of Nov. 23, a total of 171,805 PUA and DUA claims were identified as fraud due to reporting from individuals. A total of $242,220,594 payments found to be fraudulent were recovered for both PUA and DUA claims.
The DUA has engaged a nationally recognized forensic accounting firm to assist in the investigation and the above figures may be subject to change based upon that analysis.
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