Washington AG Reclaims $6.6M More In Stolen Unemployment Money

OLYMPIA, WA — The Attorney General's Office is celebrating another $6.6 million reclaimed from unemployment scammers.

Back at the start of the pandemic, as unemployment claims skyrocketed to unseen levels, fraudsters rushed to tak advantage of the panic, siphoning hundreds of millions from Washington's Employment Security Department through bogus unemployment claims.

In the years since, the Employment Security Department and Department of Justice have reclaimed some of that money as well, but the Attorney General's Office (AGO) has also been taking a crack at it, and says its efforts have been paying off.

The AGO's reclamation project is the first in the nation to use the Attorney General’s asset forfeiture authority to reclaim stolen funds. It's program works by subpoenaing banks across the country — as of the AGO's lates update, 35 banks, including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, PayPal and Citibank have been subpoenaed — and checking their data for suspicious red flags. According to the AGO, those flags include:

• Accounts that received unemployment benefit payments from multiple states;
• Accounts that received deposits of unemployment benefits to multiple people; or
• A mismatch between the personal information of the account holder and the person who supposedly applied for the benefits deposited in the account.

Once a fraudulent account has been identified, the AGO uses forfeiture law to force the banks to hand over the stolen cash. In the latest effort, a King County Superior Court judge ordered JPMorgan Chase Bank to hand over $6,589,008.34 to the state of Washington.

“We are targeting stolen funds sitting in bank accounts before fraudsters can withdraw them,” Ferguson said. “We are the only state employing this strategy, and we are having success. We will continue to use every tool in our toolbox to recover stolen funds for Washingtonians.”

All together, the Attorney General's has now reclaimed some $18.8 million in stolen unemployment funds using this strategy.