EDD halting some of the unemployment payments

A widening fraud problem has prodded the state Employment Development Department to suspend unemployment payments to some California workers even as coronavirus-linked business shutdowns have left people without a job.

The halt in payments for an unspecified number of workers comes at a time when the EDD is reporting that a backlog of unpaid unemployment claims has again begun to swell.

The brutal bottom line: Many California workers now face suspended unemployment payments due to fraud concerns, a logjam of unpaid legitimate claims, and a loss of work because state and local agencies have imposed business closures to help combat the spread of the coronavirus.

“As part of ongoing efforts to fight fraud, EDD has suspended payment on claims considered high risk,” the EDD stated in a tweet posted on Jan. 3.

The EDD appears to be scrambling this week to hire hundreds of phone agents quickly, according to a tweet that was posted on Jan. 3, just a few hours after the state agency revealed its decision to halt unemployment payments.

The department is soliciting quotes for services with the quotes due by 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 6, the EDD tweet stated.

The EDD said in the tweet it hopes to hire 300 phone agents to answer calls from EDD clients such as unemployed workers.

Two workers told the Bay Area News Group they received an email from the EDD telling them their claim was suspended. The workers also observed a similar message when they accessed their respective accounts at the EDD site. “Suspension of claim” was the subject of the message, the workers said.

“You have been receiving unemployment benefits, but we have temporarily suspended your claim because it may be tied to fraudulent activity,” the EDD told multiple workers who were seeking information on the state agency’s website about their payments.

At the same time, the EDD efforts to whittle away a mammoth backlog of unpaid legitimate claims ap

pear to have f loundered. The setback has left a growing number of California workers trapped in the EDD’s bureaucratic limbo.

In September, the EDD vowed it would erase the backlog of jobless claims by the end of January.

However, with the backlog again increasing, it wasn’t immediately clear if the EDD would be able to follow through on its promise.

The total number of unemployment claims that are stuck in the EDD backlog was about 777,800 for the week that ended on Dec. 30, a dashboard posted on the EDD’s website shows. That’s an increase of 32,100 from the backlog of 745,600 that the backlog the EDD posted for the prior week.

The most recent backlog of 777,800 consists of two categories. The totals have been rounded, so they are approximate:

• 468,100 claims by workers who filed a firsttime unemployment claim but have been waiting more than 21 days to receive their first payment or be told they don’t qualify for any benefits. These are officially known as initial claims.

• 309,600 claims by workers who received at least one payment but have been waiting more than 21 days to receive an additional payment or notification from the EDD that they don’t qualify for further payments. These are known as continuing claims.

Casey Osborne, a resident of the Ventura County city of Simi Valley, said he was notified on the EDD website that his claim was suspended due to suspected

fraud.

Osborne, however, is skeptical because he had initially filed an unemployment claim in November 2019 — prior to the coronavirus- linked business shutdowns — and the EDD had been paying him for months with no problem.

Things changed abruptly at the end of December.

“I got a notice on the EDD website that my account was frozen because of possible fraud,” Osborne said in an interview. “I think the EDD is lying. They are just trying to quell the demand from the new unemployment claims. So they are just saying it’s fraud when it might not be the case.”

This news organization requested a comment from the EDD regarding the current situation.

“We are informing those affected that their identity will need to be verified starting this week before payments can resume,” the EDD stated in the Jan. 3 tweet.

The EDD promised that more information would be made available in the coming days. A specific time frame wasn’t immediately disclosed by the state agency.

Meanwhile, countless workers in California must ponder a forbidding economic landscape of no jobs and no unemployment payments.

“There is a lot of despair right now,” Osborne said. “My car has been repossessed because of this. People have lost their homes. The EDD doesn’t realize the problems it is causing, the trouble people are having.”