Experts: 50% of Pandemic Unemployment Money Likely Stolen and Sent to Countries Like China and Russia

Criminals have had a field day filing fraudulent unemployment claims, some experts say, with much of the money ending up overseas.

Blake Hall, the CEO of ID.me, an authentication company, told Axios that over $400 billion has been paid out in fraudulent claims in the United States.

Hall estimated that as much as 50 percent of all unemployment money paid out by the government has been taken by those who had no legal claim to it.

When lockdowns and other coronavirus-related rules were imposed, businesses began to close, throwing millions of Americans out of work. Congress responded with an increase in unemployment benefits. Unemployed Americans claimed those benefits through state unemployment agencies, many of which were unable to handle the spike in applications and experienced significant technical glitches.

“Those benefits have attracted the largest cyber attack in terms of fraud in American history,” Hall said, according to KSND-TV. “The fraud rates that we’re seeing are over 10 times what we usually see at federal agencies.”

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