{"id":8063,"date":"2022-01-28T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T19:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegonewsdesk.com\/?p=8063"},"modified":"2022-01-28T12:02:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T19:02:00","slug":"california-edd-plagued-with-backlogged-fraud-attempts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegonewsdesk.com\/?p=8063","title":{"rendered":"California EDD Plagued with Backlogged Fraud Attempts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Bobbie Wylie<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fraudulent claims to California\u2019s unemployment department increased exponentially at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the Employment Development Department is still handling possible cases of fraud, to which <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Daniela Urban, executive director of the Center for Workers\u2019 Rights, says \u201cit\u2019s clear EDD does not have a standardized process of reviewing these documents.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last month, the Employment Development Department froze approximately 345,000 disability insurance claims that had been flagged as suspicious. EDD\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/edd.ca.gov\/About_EDD\/pdf\/news-22-04.pdf\">announced Thursday that it suspects 98% of the 27,000 medical providers<\/a> associated with those claims are fraudulent. EDD said that only 485 medical providers have verified their identity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">EDD has paid over $20 billion worth of fraudulent claims during the pandemic, and continues to struggle to effectively isolate fraudulent claims. EDD noted Thursday that some legitimate providers and claimants were caught up in the mass freeze and will have to go through additional verification procedures before payments can resume.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of those legitimate claimants caught up in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/california\/article\/California-EDD-s-latest-crisis-New-backlogs-16807329.php\">EDD\u2019s confusion is Erick Robles, a Hollister resident<\/a> and contractor who went on disability this fall. When his payments stopped in December, he says EDD told him \u201cthere\u2019s nothing we can do.\u201d Robles says of the situation \u201cthis is like an unfair science experiment.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">EDD is also requiring <a href=\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/newsletters\/whatmatters\/2021\/09\/california-unemployment-benefits\/\">1.4 million recipients of federal pandemic unemployment benefits<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/california-divide\/2022\/01\/edd-california-unemployment-fraud\/\">retroactively prove their eligibility or repay the money with a substantial fine.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These issues with EDD\u2019s unsatisfactory handling of fraudulent claims comes among another major challenge for California: employment insurance debt. As of January 25, California had borrowed nearly $20 billion from the federal government to pay unemployment claims. Governor Gavin Newsom has <a href=\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/newsletters\/whatmatters\/2022\/01\/california-health-insurance-newsom\/\">proposed paying down $3 billion of that debt<\/a>, but business groups &#8211; which finance the state\u2019s unemployment insurance fund &#8211; say it\u2019s not enough. California currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 6.5%, with nearly 60,000 new unemployment insurance claims being submitted last week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Photo Cred: Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Bobbie Wylie Fraudulent claims to California\u2019s unemployment department increased exponentially at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the Employment Development Department is still handling possible cases of fraud, to which Daniela Urban, executive director of the Center for Workers\u2019 Rights, says \u201cit\u2019s clear EDD does not have a standardized process of reviewing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v16.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>California EDD Plagued with Backlogged Fraud Attempts - San Diego News Desk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sandiegonewsdesk.com\/?p=8063\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"California EDD Plagued with Backlogged Fraud Attempts - San Diego News Desk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Written by Bobbie Wylie Fraudulent claims to California\u2019s unemployment department increased exponentially at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 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