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."

Comments

Unemployment rate?

[Ironsides]

I wonder how much this kind of fraud contributes to artificially(?) raising the unemployment rate. Maybe it's quite a bit lower than the reported rate due to the fraud?

Re:Unemployment rate?

[Lumpy]

They should not count because they are in a class of people that either will not accept the jobs that are available or have no useful skills for the current market.

are you really that stupid???

I know of several people that desperately are looking for a job and have been for 2 years now. The fast food places will not hire them because they know that the employee will leave the second they get a real job, and other "lesser" jobs use the "overqualified" mumbojumbo. there are tens of thousands willing to fill the need, how about the moron HR and managers actually hiring these people?

My Fiancee has a pile of rejection letters, that Masters degree of hers has lost her more jobs than anything else.

I told her to start lying and tailor the resume for the position she applies for. funny how removing the masters degree from her resume increased call-backs for interviews significantly.

Many people that run out their unemployment are not in your ivory tower republican definition. I strongly suggest you get out and actually meat real people before you pile them all in the same bucket marked "useless"

Re:Check for actual unemployment?

[Kohath]

They should just privatize the system. It's insurance. Does an insurance company just hand over money without checking to see if the claim is legit?

Airtight Security

[dereference]

FTFA:
An unemployment claim that is fraudulently made on a stolen Social Security number would be easier to detect if there were a national database of stolen Social Security numbers.

Right... Hacker target number one. Ah, but maybe they've thought of this.

Again FTFA:
If and when a database is created, the only caveat is that it must possess airtight security features.

Right... See, humans will be involved somewhere, and humans can be corrupted just as easily as databases (and perhaps more so). The database will have a lookup function or it's worthless. So who will get access? Only state unemployment offices? How about credit card companies (think MasterCard)? And won't banks want a piece of this, too?

But wait, there's more. What about employers? They certainly wouldn't want to hire somebody who is using a known stolen SSN. Ok, so employers get access. It wouldn't be fair if it weren't every employer, from massive multinationals to the mom-and-pop store on the corner. Every one of these organizations will have the ability to lookup information from this database.

FTFA one last time:
At the current time, this initiative isn't even being discussed in the halls of Congress

Let's just hope it stays that way.

Re:Check for actual unemployment?

[BlewScreen]

Yes, private systems sure is making US health system way better than the state-run systems in Europe.

I know you're trying to be sarcastic, but you're 100% correct.

Here's an interesting article that discusses this topic.

From that article:

Today, the whole world benefits freely from advances in health technology that are driven largely by the allure of the profitable U.S. market. If the United States joins other nations in having more socialized medicine, the current pace of technology improvements might well grind to a halt

and

If the US adopts a nationalized health care system, taxes will have to double for pay for it.

Sounds like the private system actually is "way better"...

-bs

Unemployment Rate is Unaffected

[tabdelgawad]

Since I'd rather not mod down incorrect responses to your question, I'll just post an answer. Short answer is 'No'. Long answer follows.

The unemployment rate is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics based on two *surveys*, a household survey and an establishment (business) survey, with the household survey being used for the unemployment percentage, currently 5.1%. Basically, A person is considered 'unemployed' if they don't have a job *AND* they are looking for one. If they're not working but not looking, they don't count (removed from the both the numerator and denominator of the unemployed % because they're not considered part of the labor force). See here for more details

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm

Specifically, "The unemployment data derived from the household survey in no way depend upon the eligibility for or receipt of unemployment insurance benefits".

Occasionally, the news will report on new initial unemployment claims filed as another indicator of the job market, and those numbers would be affected by fraudulent claims, but that's the extent of it.