The scam which put a billion dollars of pandemic unemployment money into the hands of state prisoners is growing worse.
The Bank of America telling legislators that the fraud covers more than 345 thousand different accounts. The bank’s director of government relations say those accounts total about $2 billion. Brian Putler telling state legislators that most of the fraud resulted from identity theft, stolen bank cards or other types of fraud.
At the direction of the Employment Development Department, 345 thousand accounts were frozen. Putler says the bank received almost no push-back from the holders of those frozen cards.
Michael Hestrin is the district attorney in Riverside county. He says “It appears there was no system set up to check for fraud. I don’t know who was at the wheel.”
EDD was responsible for administrating the federal aid after the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the economy in March. Thousands of prisoners applied for the benefits. Most received them.
