California has opened hundreds of investigations into unemployment fraud involving prisoners
A California task force formed five months ago to investigate fraudulent unemployment claims involving incarcerated people said Monday that there have so far been 68 arrests and it has opened 1,641 other inquiries.
The report by the statewide task force comes after local prosecutors warned that potentially tens of thousands of fraudulent claims have been filed involving people in prison and jail that could total $2 billion.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in November that he was asking state officials to form a task force with federal prosecutors and county district attorneys who had already begun investigating improper claims filed in the names of people behind bars, including those on death row.
The Newsom administration released an update on its investigations Monday shortly after Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber reported there were sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot an effort to recall the governor.
"This coordinated and targeted partnership between government and law enforcement has been very successful so far in detecting and disrupting COVID-19-related fraud schemes," Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, said in a statement.
Some state lawmakers remain critical of Newsom, saying the state did not act fast enough to stop fraud in prisons.
"His response to the outrageous amount of fraud was so underwhelming, the same DAs he's now wisely working with actually started cracking down on EDD fraud without him," Assemblyman Jim Pattterson (R-Fresno) said on Monday.