Protecting the Payments

As unemployment insurance claims increased dramatically because of pandemic job losses, incidents of fraud have also grown exponentially in federal and state government systems.

With the increased number of unemployment claims and the CARES act changes, identity theft cases have skyrocketed over the last two years. Organized gangs of international hackers targeted state agencies and their aging IT systems. Estimates of the amount of money lost run close to $90 billion. The solution for many state agencies has been the use of artificial intelligence and data analytics to identify suspicious behavior and flag questionable accounts. States are also sharing UI claims data in an online exchange system, and others are requiring a dual authentication process to reduce fraud and abuse of the systems. But they all recognize the need to be able to monitor large volumes of claims and the patterns of data that signal fraud.