SENT TO CALIFORNIA PRISONS, INMATES RECEIVE UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

California Approved $140 Million in Unemployment Benefits for 20,000 Prisoners, Including Death Row Murderers

 

By Blake Montgomery 

 

Daily Beast

November 24, 2020

 

California’s unemployment office approved applications for benefits that sent $140 million to 20,000 convicted prisoners, including claims on behalf of more than 100 death row murderers. 

 

The Employment Development Department, which has faced a massive backlog of applications due to a loss of jobs caused by the coronavirus pandemic, failed to check applicants’ names against prison databases between March and August of this year, according to local and federal California prosecutors.

 

The fraud was blatant but successful nonetheless. Prisoners applied under both real and fake names, and one even used the moniker “poopy britches.” A single address was listed in the applications of 16 different inmates. 

 

Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer said, “In my nearly four decades as a prosecutor in this state, I have never seen fraud of this magnitude.” 

 

Thus far, 22 people have been charged, all in San Mateo County, 16 of whom are in prison. 

 

Prisoners often collaborated with an outside accomplice who would receive the benefits on their behalf.

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO DO TOO MUCH WITH TOO LITTLE

 

by Bob Walsh

The head of EDD reported yesterday that at least 35,000 unemployment claims were filed in CA by or for prisoners.  The scam is known to have reached into every jail and prison in the state, even hitting 188 death row prisoners.

It is unknown how many of these false claims were filed by the prisoners themselves, how many were filed by their homies on the outside, and how many were crimes of opportunity by scammers who managed to come up with social security numbers to match to their names.

The total loss exceeds $1 billion.  The EDD clowns expect that pretty much zero of this will be recoverable.