I received a Determination Notice last April for an active employee.  Knowing she has a weekend job, I asked if she had been laid off there and was claiming UC.  She had not done either.  She contacted her weekend employer and they had also received a UC notice for her.  Both employers responded indicating that the employee was still active and had not filed the claim, and filed Request for Relief of Charges.  Neither of us got any response.  Then in mid-May I received a Notice of Application for another active employee.  I checked with him, but he too had not filed any claims.  I completed the appropriate responses for him also.  When I received my May charge statement, the first employee was on it and 2 weeks of benefits had already been paid out.  I again  sent in a Request for Relief, by mail and by fax. 

On July 5, I received another Notice of Application for yet a third active employee.  I sent the paperwork in by fax and mail. When the new portal opened, I found that I had a fourth employee listed as filing a claim.  I filled out the appropriate responses for all 4 on the portal.  Then I called the telephone number that I found on a recent notice that was different from the one I had tried previously.  After two and a half hours on hold, a wonderful UC rep named Kathy picked up.  We worked through all 4 claims.  The most recent had been filed on June 30.  She was able to shut that one down before anything had gone through.  Employee number 3 is active military - his claim was red-flagged by the system and was already suspended, which is why I never received notice for him.

The older two, however, were both active, paying claims.  Both had new mailing addresses and new deposit information.  These had been changed when the claim was opened.  Kathy put in tickets for investigation and closed the claims.  All together I was on the call over 4 hours. (of course, I got a lot of other stuff done while I was on hold!)  That call took place on July 8.

On July 15, I received a Notice of Application for Employee 1.  On the 16th I received a new claim notice for Employee 3.  The new claims were dated July 11.  It seems as though Kathy closing the claim on the 8th triggered an automated response to create a new claim.  I was able to contact Kathy by email to let her know I had received the new documents. I trust she has followed up and closed the claims again.

Kathy advised that the employees whose claims had begun to pay out should file a police report with their local barracks.  Effectively, the scammers have stolen something of value from them.  Should the IRS contact them about owing tax on the paid benefits, they will need the police report number as evidence that they were not the recipient of the benefits.

All four employees have also reported the fraud on the UC website and with the Credit Reporting agencies.  PowerRail is contracting an Identity Theft Protection Service for all of our employees for the next year as a means to quell any concerns about future fraud.  I also contacted Paylocity and our IT department to confirm that no data breaches had occured in our systems.  This appears, however, to be a government information breach.  Because it is happening nationwide, I believe the breach must have occured at Social Security or IRS.

I have read several articles advising people to not ignore communications from Unemployment, but in these cases the employees would not receive any communications; their mailing addresses had been changed.  I have also received several notices regarding former employees recently.  I have begun reaching out to them to confirm that they are applying for benefits.

Deborah