Slashdot Mirror
Identity Thieves Drain Unemployment Benefit Funds
Makarand writes "According to a News.com.com article, the
defrauding of state government
unemployment benefit programs is the most underpublicized identity theft crime
and the states are not doing much about it. Identity thieves are using
stolen social security numbers to file false unemployment claims and collecting
benefits because the states have no systems in place to deter fraud. In fact,
it is easier to convert stolen identity data into money by filing
false unemployment claims than going after the credit card companies." From the article: "File a false unemployment claim and you can receive $400 per week for 26 weeks. Do it for 100 Social Security numbers and you've made a quick $1.04 million. It's tough to make crime pay much better than that."
From TFA:
With all the theft of personal information in the news lately, and considering that a large percentage of this stolen information was Social Security numbers, it might be easier to compile a national database of Social Security numbers that haven't been stolen. ^_^
Seriously, though, this is just yet another good argument to ditch the Social Security number system entirely...it's clearly not working. Essentially, with just one number, you have a system where the SSN is both the public and the private part of the ID, and as any security professional can tell you, that simply is not a workable model.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
To which extent do they actually check that the person is in fact unemployed? Certainly, a person-to-person talk should take place before they hand over money just like that? Perhaps this is a bigger problem in their system as identity theft appears to be one of many ways to exploit that system.
see a Text Widget
Life's not that simple. For every person ripping off the unemployment system there are 9 others who actually need it. Well, that is unless this new type the article talks about takes off...Maybe people will actually start to enforce proper management of the system?
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Its not like its their money. Until government civil servents can be fired instead of collecting big fat pensions, we will NEVER get any changes from the government.
Actually, the fraud doesn't even come close to balancing out the other side of the equation: people dropping off of unemployment because it expired. That's why when the gov't trots out it's usual "The economy is GREAT!" speech, and back that up with falling unemployment numbers, all that means is that a lot of people had their benefits run out.
I don't respond to AC's.
When the author referred to the victims of this crime as being the government agencies and not the taxpayers, I stopped reading.
What?
No doubt lots of fraud going on but simply having the SSAN isn't all you need. You would also need at least some employment history data.
Instead of another central database which conveniently aggregates all your personal information in one place, ripe for the hacking, what we need is a law passed that requires companies to remove the SSAN from their databases. All of them. The company can replace it with a unique identifier if they want but there is no reason for them to have the SSAN in the first place. Yes, I know it's the one number everyone remembers when someone is trying to identify you, but that is a poor reason for every database on the planet to contain such an important identifier. Let's develop a better way to authenticate someone, why don't we?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
File a false unemployment claim and you can receive $400 per week for 26 weeks. Do it for 100 Social Security numbers and you've made a quick $1.04 million.
Quick? 26 weeks? Plus the start up overhead of several weeks?
Infuriate left and right
It seems like it would be trivial to scan a database for recurring addresses -- sure, there might be four people in a two-bedroom apartment collecting unemployment. But fifty? A hundred? Send an investigator out to talk to anyone living at an address with more than (e.g.) six registered names. If nothing else, he can interview all six of the people and see if there's a systemic problem keeping them from getting work in an area.
Two things bother me about the article, however:
1) The person calling our attention to this problem is a software vendor. He runs a payroll software firm, and probably has some financial interest in fraud-detection software. If nothing else, his byline contains an advertisement for his company.
2) He doesn't really present any evidence for the problem other than hearsay from an official in Washington State. Neither of them presents any real numbers.
I think it's wise to prevent this problem, and shore up any weakness to this exploit that may exist, but it's also important to be sure that a problem exists before demanding that the state take action.
Right, and then those people will have children that go hungry while at the same time they're stealing your car radio and mugging your wife after she gets off work in the evening because they're unable to both look for work and keep a roof over their kids' heads at the same time.
Welcome to reality, where criminals are real people and economic crime doesn't stop just because you say "Hey, wait, it's a free market! This isn't fair! Why don't you get a job?"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The author only addresses how to detect and punish the fraud when it happens as opposed to preventing the fraud. Here is a much better idea: Force those wanting unemployment to travel to the unemployment office in person, scan a fingerprint with a modern scanner, take their picture, and record the SS#, age, and name. This will prevent two individuals from ever claiming the same identity, or a single person from registering multiple SS#s.
So, in the very recent past, they WERE willing to accept a job and their skills WERE useful.Again, they were considered "useful" in the very recent past.
By your "logic", there would never be any unemployment because the only people who would be counted as "unemployed" would have skills currently needed by business and a willingness to work for those businesses. So why would they not be hired by those businesses?
And before you talk about demanding too much money, the businesses would only have to offer them more than they'd make on unemployment.
Which doesn't leave much rational for "unemployment".
And a later post by demaria correctly states how the unemployment figure is reached - a household survey of 1,000 people - and if some of those people are now homeless - they simply count some more until they've reached that 1,000 number - thus not figuring in reality to the picture. (All one need do is check out the actual poverty statistics - this give a closer - but still not accurate [make that still smaller] number of real unemployment.)
Thats exactly how Ohio works too.
I would imagine that most states are the same way, and that the article is full of FUD.
Nice dictionary definition.
Now how are they REALLY counted. If you are on unemployment and you go to the office every week or file the paperwork every week to get your check, you are easy to count. If your benefits run out and you stop filing the paperwork, what happens? Does someone call you every week/month to see if you finally got a job (yeah, right)? Do they just assume you will never get a job and you are counted for life (yeah, right)?
So while that is the official definition, how does it REALLY work? Is the bureaucratic definition, "those that filed paperwork"?
Have I missed something?
You mean like expecting the state to actually know what it's doing?
To clear my less-than-perfect post a bit:
Stolen passwords or cards can be retired, while compromised biometric data will haunt you forever.
They might have a degree that they want use rather than flipping burgers for the time being. So it happens quite a bit.
Sorry. This is something that really pisses me off. I've held jobs "beneath me" while looking for real work. Does it suck? Yup.
But what it boils down to in my mind is "Should I live off someone else when I don't have to? Or should I go work a job I don't like". To me, the answer is the latter choice.
I have NOTHING against giving someone a hand when they need it. Unemployment is a way to keep folks from losing everything when they lose a job. With today's fluid job market, it is a necessity. Welfare is great for those who truly need it.
But what I hate is... I'd rather you work for me than me get a job I don't want. Guess what? That unemployment check came from folks who have jobs they don't want.
I am involved in the hiring process at my job. Guess what: All other things being equal, I hire the guy with six months at McD's over the guy with six months looking for work. Every time. The first tells me: This guy wants to work. This guy is responsible. Those are the kind of guys I want working around me.
(Rant mode off.... for now)
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Um sorry, but your wife should have done that from the beginning. Why in the world would she just make some kind of "generic" resume, instead of doing research as to the kind of person that perticular job wants and targeting her resume for that?
Honestly, finding a job should not be that big a deal. Finding a GOOD job that pays well and has all the benifits you want, that's a bit tougher. But getting hired at a fast food place? Unless you're a moron who has no people skills and no desire to learn, that should not be a problem. If you aren't getting a job, instead of blaming the government, your skills, or whatever, start looking at what you can do differently. Even walking around homeless on the street can teach you lessons, if you would only look for them.
Look, I'm not a republican in the least. But I agree with republicans in that most of the time, the reason people are not finding work is because they are unwilling to learn how to be different then they are. In other words, if a jobless person stays the same, with all their current habits and beliefs, then they will NEVER find work. NEVER. Because they are not in the habit of finding work. Their very nature is to be jobless, because that's what they are doing. That's what led up to now, the things they did, the habits they formed, it all equaled joblessness. So the fault is in THEM, not in the government, not in the job market, not anyone else- THEM.
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If I could tell jobless people one thing, I would tell them that 90% of success is all in your brain and the way you think about yourself and your world, not in what specific skills you have at the moment. With the right outlook, the right skills can be learned, regardless of your past or where you where you are right now where you THINK you can't learn anything.
Here are some ways to get people going:
1) Successful people believe they create their lives, rather then believing that life happens to them. Hopelessness is weak. And it's untrue- it assumes that person didn't have even one success in their lives, which is impossible.
2) Successful people look for what they are doing right, rather then what they are doing wrong. You get more of what you focus on. If you focus on what's wrong with you, you will actually attract more crap into your life.
3) Successful people don't blame, complain, or justify themselves. They take full accountablity for their lives and their situation. In other words, they come from a place of acknowledging what they do or not do by CHOICE, not because someone "forced" them to do anything.
There are many more, but if you want to get a clue, read The Millionaire Mind by T Harv Eker.
They point out how almost everywhere, the claimant needs to claim in person... to have too many false faces is to share to wealth too widely, so why aren't they picked up by the staff working in the unemployment offices themselves?
Or is the fraud itself being exaggerated? Perhaps if there is a fraud, it's an internal one.
Wikileaks, no DNS
What a bunch of self-help crap that is. The real truth is that there are all kinds of successful people, who got that way by all kinds of different ways, and who have very different personalities and act quite differently. There is no one or even handfull of ways to become successful. Hell, even the term successful means different things to different people. There are plenty of rich, miserable people out there too. Sometimes the traits that help you make money don't help you make friends.
You are correct - I could argue that most bank's CIPs already conformed to the Patriot Act but I won't disagree with you aftre doing a little more research; since the FDIC has issued guidance on the subject it looks like the Patriot Act has gotten its grubbly little fingers into a lot of new places, not just the highly publicized or obvious ones:
4 04a.html
x .html
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2004/fil0
The FDIC Financial Institution Letters make interesting reading in general:
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2005/inde
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
At any rate, I can't imagine this is a pervasive crime. It's not like you can just submit a SSN online and receive $400 in your mailbox each week. They need to verify that you were working, how long you were working for, that your employer was paying your unemployment insurance, that your employer does not contest your unemployment claim, and that your employer terminated you through no fault of your own.
There is no way this is happening on a mass scale.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent