By: Mark Glennon*
Failure to implement technology controls over the Covid pandemic unemployment assistance system, failure to maintain adequate pandemic assistance claimant data and lack of internal controls over financial accounting and reporting. Those are among the problems in accounting and controls for the Illinois Unemployment Trust Fund identified in a new audit. The auditor was therefore unable to attest to the accuracy of numbers reported, which showed a loss of $116 million. The audit, released Thursday, is for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022.
This is the latest in what has been a truly historic fiasco — the biggest financial scandal in American history: extended unemployment benefits during the Covid pandemic that were riddled with fraud and mismanagement.
Nationally, at least $191 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits appears to have been improperly paid out according to the most recent estimates from the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General, with probably $76 billion of that attributable to fraud. But nobody really knows the exact numbers thanks to the shoddy accounting and controls in Illinois and most other states.
Illinois alone lost about $2 billion to fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims according to an earlier audit.
Illinois recently passed a law extending the statute of limitations in an attempt to assure that fraudsters could be chased down and money recovered. That’s nice, but does any enforcement authority have the resources necessary to pursue so many fraudsters? Even if they had the resources, how could a case be proved if the state’s own records are so shoddy? And if they didn’t care when the money was going out the door whether the payments were proper, why think they’d have more motivation now?
-Mark Glennon
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Illinois unemployment fraud ….heinous given the incompetency of IL political class.
Simple fix: contract with a big 4 consulting firm and turn all data and systems over to the selected firm …..contract to provide that 50% of recoveries to go to the consultant and 50% to the state. Bet you would get some hard nosed hedge funds and private equity firms who would be interested in that deal.
Left to their own devices, IL politicians will simply sweep the $100s of billions under the carpet, and enact a new tax.
It is what they do to doctors. Guilt is presumed, on the word of the incentized RAC auditor.
Doctors bear the burden of proving their innocence, with legal fees so high that settlement is often cheaper than fighting.
RAC gets paid on collections, without distinction for merit of accusations.
Incomprehensible and frequently changing Billing-coding standards make RAC audits the final straw for medical professionals who still accept Medicare and Medicaid. Scarcity of providers ensues.
https://hfs.illinois.gov/oig/rac-hms.html
I got a letter from the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office the other day. Well, actually, it was addressed to a straw name in some sort of fraud scheme involving my mailbox. The straw name has $105 of unclaimed property at some bank I’ve never heard of! Looks like we’re going to win this small battle if it escheats back to the state.
Check the Illinois official site first. I had 20 bucks or so in a bank I forgot about and I got it back. Now I’m wealthy.
https://icash.illinoistreasurer.gov/
Sounds like they need an outside firm to totally revamp the department to help prevent fraud. Wouldn’t expect that to happen.
Or, better yet, hire outside contractor to go after fraud altogether. Maybe with contractor incentivized to be able to keep small % of recovered funds. Are any other states pursuing prosecution of COVID unemployment fraud this way?
One example: RAC audits common in medical practices; independent contractors incentivized to “find something “.
Another example: Lately, a widely-used private enterprise to find property tax cheats: hired by township and county assessors, this company finds fraudulent homestead exemption claims.
Hiring bounty hunters produces powerful results.
Probably with passage of Amendment 1 AFSCME claims all the unemployment fraud investigation jobs at IDES ,so it’s impossible to bring in outside contractors?
What else can we expect…
When they rely on the abacus for calculating…