SACRAMENTO – (INT) – The State Employment Development Department (EDD) announced Tuesday it has recovered $1.1 billion in unemployment insurance funds.

It’s estimated there were 47-thousand fraudulent claims. Those were traced to 780-thousand inactivated benefit cards.

Over the past 15-months, there were more than 15-hundred investigations and 467 arrests.

Most of the recovered funds will return to the federal government because the fraudulent claims stemmed from the emergency federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. That was the primary target of fraud in California and nationwide.

Governor Newsom said “Fraudsters and criminal organizations ripped off California, along with every other state, during one of the worst crises in history.”

Story Date: July 5, 2022