COVID: Washington unemployment fraud might be $650 million

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Washington officials said Thursday they believe they have recovered about half of the hundreds of millions in unemployment benefits paid to criminals who used stolen identities to file claims during the coronavirus pandemic.

Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine said officials are still working to determine the final amount paid out fraudulently, but they believe it was between $550 million and $650 million. To date, the state has recovered $333 million, she said.

“We do believe there is still a significant amount we can get back,” she said.

The number of new claims for unemployment benefits in Washington dropped to just over 31,000 last week. LeVine said the drop is in part because of the ongoing anti-fraud efforts and because the economy is restarting under the state’s four-stage reopening plan that is bringing people back to work.

A West African fraud ring using identities stolen in prior data breaches, such as the massive 2017 Equifax breach, is believed to be behind the fraud, which has targeted nearly a dozen states, according to California cybersecurity firm Agari.

The cultural rot in the leadership of WA state and other blue states is appalling. We’ve got a governor, the Seattle mayor and police chief doing nothing more than race baiting, calling those who disagree with their policies racists and just simply playing the game of identity politics. Not one of these leaders, if you can even call them that, will forcefully condemn the rioting, looting, fires, destruction of both public and private property, assaults and murders that have occurred since the George Floyd apparent homicide. None of this seems to matter. These lives don’t matter. Just George Floyd’s life matters. These leaders don’t talk of this and social media can’t pull the videos pointing out this violence around the country down fast enough now. None will condemn Antifa and other militants including the looters who are probably getting their clearance from Antifa leaders in the crowd (the ones with the wires to their ears) on where to loot, because deep in the left’s heart, these communist leaders of ours silently support what is going on.

These protests have become a joke and nothing more than a standoff with law enforcement where the protesters taunt law enforcement with vile language, spitting on them, and throwing the occasional water bottle at them. To what end? Wee, the Seattle protesters are demanding a complete defunding of the Seattle Police Department.

While we in the state are locked down, about a million people unemployed, tens of thousands of businesses on the verge of never opening again, Third Reich contact tracing ordered by the governor, we are told to wear masks, stay six feet apart or else we’ll fine and/or jail you.

Yet our leaders have no problem with protesters running around with no social distancing at all. Doesn’t make the point the blue state lock downs are nothing but political at this point? Yea, some protesters are wearing masks but without the distancing, the mask is nothing more than a costume piece to hide their identity.

Our leaders tell us protesters have the absolute right to peaceably assemble, obviously in any number, per the 1st Amendment but Jay Inslee orders that the 1st Amendment means something else to church goers.

Our leaders have tipped their hands. They are communists hell bent on destroying a society built up over 240 years ago both morally (the basis of our law) and economically. Jay Inslee’s attempt to use this lock down to achieve his green communist wet dream in his Bernie Sanders interview is proof of that.

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