Unemployment fraud

Back in May, I got a letter from the Washington State Employment Security Department suggesting that I had filed for unemployment, but I had not done so. Uh oh! Sadly, I was part of a very widespread fraud problem, in which the criminals used SSNs obtained in earlier data breaches and exploited the government’s efforts to pay claims quickly in the pandemic. We now know that by the last week of April, the Washington State ESD was averaging 2,000 fraudulent claims a day. Eventually it added up to over 80,000 claims; $576 million was paid out to crooks. Really shameful.

Fortunately, there was no direct harm to me, other than spending a couple hours reporting and locking things down. I reported the fraud to the Employment Security Department, the police, and my employer. I froze my credit and activated a credit fraud alert. I set up an account with the IRS (so that no one else would be able to do that), locked my SSN, and reported to identitytheft.gov. It was all very educational and thank goodness, nothing else was wrong: my bank accounts were as they should be, my credit was clean (no fraudulent accounts were created), and the IRS website knew me as my real self and showed no fraudulent activity. That was a big relief.

I kept careful records of everything I did and diligently filed every acknowledgement I received. Nothing else has happened. I have been assured that if I need to apply for unemployment benefits, I still can… but let’s hope that need does not arise.