Is Anyone Trying to Get Back the $5 Billion in Unemployment Fraud?
Attorney General Kwame Raoul
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After a scathing report from the Illinois Auditor General report last month showed Governor JB Pritzker’s administration was “not prepared” for the onslaught of unemployment claims and fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic, many critics asked what Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul were doing to recover the $5 billion in lost funds.
During the months after the pandemic began taking a toll on the economy, the Illinois Department of Employment Security stopped using its typical standards to confirm the identities of unemployment applicants in an effort to get money out the door as quickly as possible, leading to the rise in fraud and overpayments.
A total of $2 billion was fraudulently paid out by the state’s unemployment system and another $3 billion was paid out by the state from the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program.
Asked about the audit this week, Governor JB Pritzker downplayed the state’s failures.
“In an emergency, you act as quickly as you possibly can to help people that are in need,” Pritzker said, not noting that IDES bypassed typical verifications. “The idea that we’re now going to go back into the history books and pretend that there wasn’t an emergency and then try to hold people accountable for decisions that had to be made on the fly and thinking about the best interests of the people of Illinois, getting money into their hands when they had lost their jobs, I think, would be a travesty.”
Though Pritzker did replace the Acting IDES Director at the time, Thomas Chan, a holdover from former Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration.
Pritzker continued to hold that fraud was widespread in every state.
“I want to point out for those that are complaining about the amount of money that was involved in UI fraud, that across the entire United States, hundreds of billions of dollars was lost,” Pritzker said, pointing out he even received a letter someone attempted to file a claim on his behalf in Kentucky. “That’s just evidence of how widespread this problem really was.”
But Republicans say other states were fixing the problems long before Illinois did.
“At the same time other states were closing the door on fraudulent activity, at the same time the federal government was issuing guidance on best practices for prevention of cyber crimes, [the Pritzker administration] left the door wide open,” Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet) said on our podcast after the audit was released. “They outright ignored the guidance given to them by our federal partners on how to stop this very thing from happening. [Other states] didn’t leave their doors open as long as you did to be robbed blind.”
Pritzker blamed the federal government for a “poorly designed” PUA program that required all states to take part.
As for those who committed crimes defrauding the state, we asked the office of Attorney General Kwame Raoul, the state’s top law enforcement officer, what they’re doing about investigating cases of fraud and abuse.
“The Attorney General’s office is currently prosecuting multiple criminal cases as a result of the task force’s collaboration and will seek to hold accountable those who unlawfully obtained benefits and to recover taxpayer funds whenever possible,” a spokesperson said, though didn’t say how many cases were being prosecuted.
The AG’s office said they partnered with the FBI to create a task force to “investigate and hold accountable” those who commit unemployment insurance benefits fraud.
While Pritzker continued to defend the actions, he did admit the state made mistakes
“It doesn’t mean we did everything right,” he said. “Nobody did.”
