Lawmakers heard an update about the new unemployment compensation system at a hearing yesterday.
Secretary of Labor and Industry Jennifer Berrier said that since the new system launched in June, they have paid over 500,000 compensation claims.
But, the new system also attracted fraudsters.
“L&I has identified nearly 300,000 initial claims as fraudulent. This accounts for more than 75 percent of claims filed on the system. Luckily, backend fraud measures in the system flagged these claims, and payments were prevented in most cases,” Berrier said.
Berrier said if the scammers had succeeded, they would have taken more than $5 billion from the state.