prisoners who are incarcerated in the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) illegally filed for those same benefits, or filings were made of their behalf, even though by law they are not eligible.
Many prisoners, some on death row or sentenced to life in prison, have received numerous monthly checks. Some family members of those prisoners have received checks in the prisoners’ names.
Not all illegal filings are made by the prisoners themselves, yet scammers are using names and social security numbers of thousands of unknowing people, both inside of prisons and outside of prisons.
It has been estimated that over $2 billion has already been or will eventually be paid out to fraudsters, some of whom are incarcerated and some of whom are not. The computer systems used by the state‘s Employment Development Department (Cal EDD) are just as old or older than those used by the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (Cal DMV). This is the self-same state that houses Silicon Valley, the think-tank cradle of innovative computer software, hardware, and everything else computer-related for over 35 years. California is not one of the 35 states in the country that has a system to cross-check applications for unemployment benefits, resulting in massive delays, no payments, mismanaged processing, incorrect payments to dead people, pets, inanimate objects, false addresses, incorrect addresses, ineligible people, double payments, etc. The EDD leadership and personnel found themselves utterly overwhelmed and outclassed when COVID19 struck and the percentages of applicants skyrocketed in spring 2020, and in the eight months since, has not improved very much.
One of the ironies is that the EDD cites a major cause of its problems to be the high volume of work that needs to be done by staffing numbers that are insufficient to meet the demands. Er, um, why not hire a few thousand of the unemployed people who have filed with your department? You should know who and where they are . . .
:(
