Prairie State Wire

NSN Employer Services is among the Illinois companies seeing a surge in unemployment fraud as the state tries to speed up the process of paying out claims resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

CBS Chicago reports that NSN, which works with more than 2,000 Illinois businesses, has seen 30 to 40 unemployment fraud cases per week since the start of the coronavirus. This is compared to just one to two cases per week prior to the pandemic.

“It’s unbelievable,” NSN Manager Jennifer Castellanos told CBS Chicago. “I was expecting the influx of claims to rise, but nowhere near expecting the amount of fraud claims to rise.”

NSN Manager Jennifer Castellanos | LinkedIn

The issue of employed workers being approved for unemployment benefits stems from them being victims of identity fraud and the state not properly verifying claims, according to CBS Chicago. NSN has informed the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) of at least 300 fraud cases.

“Fraud is part of all unemployment systems and, unfortunately, can be particularly egregious during times of crisis,” IDES told ABC 7 Chicago.

ABC 7 Chicago reports that unemployment scams are occurring in two ways: Either someone uses another person’s information to file a claim or someone creates a synthetic identity based on some information related to a real person and then filing a claim.

“This year we really have this perfect storm for fraud, for identity fraud and theft because we have this combination of lots of money flowing very quickly into the economy through these unemployment benefits,” Scott Clements, CEO of security group OneSpan, told ABC 7 Chicago.

While IDES told ABC 7 Chicago that it is prohibited from commenting on specific fraud cases, department officials did say there are measures in place to handle the problem.

“The unemployment system was created with built-in safety nets to detect, stop and pursue those who commit fraud, including cross-matching claimant information against wage records,” IDES told ABC 7 Chicago.