California's Crackdown On Unemployment Claims Keeping Immigrants From Their Promised Benefits
Speaker 1: 00:00 The pandemic has led to millions of unemployment claims across the state and efforts by the state and bank of America to cut down on possible fraud. But as KPBS reporter, max Reveille Nadler tells us those efforts have ensnared San Diego residents with legitimate unemployment claims leaving. Many of them fighting for their benefits. For months, Speaker 2: 00:22 Gary Hito immigrated to San Diego from Ethiopia 20 years ago. For the past 16 years, he's been a shuttle driver at the San Diego airport. When the pandemic had in March, thousands of flights were canceled and Hito was soon. Speaker 3: 00:37 They, they said, if the situation come back, they will hire me again. Speaker 2: 00:42 Hito is able to get unemployment a month after that for a household, including his wife and four school age children, the money from unemployment was huge, right? Speaker 3: 00:50 For rent for family, I have a big family, Speaker 2: 00:53 But in the middle of October, his account was almost zeroed out. $4,200 were gone. Speaker 3: 00:59 When I went there to take my money for rent, I don't see the money Speaker 2: 01:04 He's been fighting to get his money back. Ever since Speaker 3: 01:07 When I call, they said they will send me another card after they send me another card. The situation is the same. Again. I tried to call to explain to them. They transferred to me for about three people. I weighed about one hour and 15 minutes. Then they have Speaker 2: 01:27 Despite call after call to bank of America. He's been unable to get the process even started. California is one of only three States in the country that doesn't directly deposit unemployment insurance payments to people's bank accounts. Instead it sends them debit cards from bank of America, but the cards have proven susceptible to theft and skimming devices. And then there were fraudulent claims being made to the States employment development department, which administers the state's unemployment system and authorizes the amounts on the debit cards. Widespread fraud for a state with emptying coffers means the state has been cracking down on any accounts that look fraudulent, but working immigrants like Hito and laid off house cleaner Rama Ebraheem who's from Somalia have found their accounts zeroed out as well. Speaker 3: 02:19 [inaudible] Speaker 2: 02:19 Because you said for the last three months, she's been told by the bank to take up her case with the state and vice versa, navigating the various health numbers as well as a major bank and an overwhelmed state. Bureaucracy is difficult even for people with English as a first language. So Ebraheem, and Hito depend on the work of the Somali Bantu association of America from its office on university Avenue in city Heights, executive director Syeda [inaudible] has helped thousands of African immigrants navigate the state's social safety net. Speaker 3: 02:50 They don't speak any English. They were having difficulty connecting the resources that are available for them. We, as the agency, we were trying to provide through WhatsApp, Speaker 2: 03:01 But even with site's help Gary Hito and ramen Abraham have still hit dead ends bank of America and the state didn't restore their accounts. After countless attempts, Rancho Penasquitos resident in Mac is in the same boat, an independent contractor in the entertainment industry. He spent the past two months trying to get his account with over $8,000 in it restored. He reads a letter. He was sent Speaker 4: 03:25 Well, claim has been closed because we believe the accounts of the account or the claim have been subject to fraud or suspicious activity. We're here to help. If you have any questions, please call us at eight five, Speaker 2: 03:36 You spent over five hours on hold. One time, Speaker 4: 03:39 The people who have rent to pay the people who have comp copies to pay, as you say, the people who've got four or five kids and can't feed, you know, not every day, can you go to a food bank and this and this food, this and why should they have to do that through no fault of their own? Speaker 2: 03:54 In a statement of bank of America, spokesperson told KPBS that it is working with law enforcement to crack down on fraudulent claims and that anyone with the legitimate claim impacted by these efforts should contact them immediately. But for a lot of people just trying to keep a roof over their head, this holiday season, that task can not only be daunting, but near impossible. Speaker 1: 04:17 Joining me is KPBS reporter max Revlon, Nadler, max, welcome to the show. Good to be here. I understand there has been some movement on a couple of these unemployment benefit freezes because of this story. Speaker 2: 04:31 Yeah. After reaching out to bank of America, both Ian Mac and ramen, Ebraheem saw their accounts unfrozen by bank of America. Uh, Ian Mac has a kind of a longer road ahead of him. As he tells me he still has to take up his claim with EDD. Um, and so he hasn't been able to access as money, but Robin Abraham, I spoke with her on Friday and said she was able to go, uh, take out money from her account. As of this morning, we're still waiting to hear on whether Gary [inaudible] claim has been, um, started because he had trouble even getting it going. Speaker 1: 05:04 How long did it take from the time they were cut off to having their benefits restored? Speaker 2: 05:09 It was a process that took over a month in each case, uh, you know, in terms of Gary Hito, he never was even able to start the process because he had to wait so long to even get on the phone with somebody. And again, these are people who don't have the luxury of time. I think Ian Mac, the person I profiled was the one who had the most time because a native English speaker, um, and really committed himself to this. Whereas everybody else they're managing a large family. They're still trying to find all jobs. They're trying to make it work. Um, and it's really difficult to navigate this system, especially if English is not your first language. So in each case, it took over a month and that's for money that they earned. It's their unemployment insurance. Speaker 1: 05:50 Were you able to determine what triggered the employment development department to put a freeze on these particular bank accounts? In Speaker 2: 05:59 Each case, the original freeze came because of fraudulent spending. Uh, so, you know, it's very possible in each case where we haven't gotten to the bottom of it, that the identities of these individuals were in some way stolen, either through a skimming device, on an ATM or having, um, their own identity purchased off of the dark web by scammers, things like that. They then had to go into this entire process just to prove that their accounts should be restored. Speaker 1: 06:28 Do we know how many accounts have been frozen in this way? Speaker 2: 06:32 We don't know, because at least anecdotally, quite a bit, there's been a lot of reporting across the state. Cal matters up in the, uh, North California and the Bay area. They've been looking into this, so we don't have actual numbers, but we do know that this system is entirely overwhelmed. Speaker 1: 06:50 Why were these unemployment benefit? Debit cards issued without security, without let's say security chips was that to get them out faster. Speaker 2: 06:59 This is an outdated technology, basically the debit cards STEM from after the 2008 recession. And when the state went through financial difficulties all the way through 2010 and beyond, um, since then the contract hasn't really changed in the technology. Hasn't really changed. I myself was on unemployment and a few years ago, and I got a card from EDD. Uh, that looks exactly the same as the one they're pointing out now that they're putting out now to, you know, thousands and thousands of people. And it didn't have this chip, which I think has become the standard for security in this day and age. Speaker 1: 07:37 Apparently that's just one of the mistakes that EDD has made and administering millions of unemployment claims this year. Tell us more about the widespread fraud that the state is now dealing with. Speaker 2: 07:49 Right? You know, these are fraud, you know, these accounts were tagged as being fraudulent and it was possibly because there was real identity theft happening here and that's happening across the entire system. Uh, EDD was never made for the coronavirus pandemic, right? We have a great depression level levels of unemployment happening right now. This was already kind of an older system that hadn't been updated in many, many years, and it wasn't built for this. So what people are doing is they're taking advantage of the fact that so many people are applying for unemployment claims that the state obviously wants to help as many people as possible and is approving them without doing much more of this, uh, you know, background checks to seeing who's being approved for these cases, especially in, um, a case that was brought up by several district attorneys last week, people who are right now in prison were getting unemployment insurance for basically being laid off from jobs they didn't have, right? Cause they're incarcerated. That doesn't mean that incarcerated people, uh, don't get things like a stimulus checker or other to social services. Oftentimes they do. But in this case, they were basically being their identities were being used to create fraudulent claims Speaker 1: 09:04 Outside of the Somali Bantu association. Is there any other group helping people regain access to their unemployment funds when they've been cut off like this Speaker 2: 09:14 Social service organizations are just trying to get people signed up for their employment funds and they are overwhelmed. It's really tough. It's super time intensive. Uh, so a lot of groups in the area working on this, but again, it's kind of all, um, broken up into different groups that are trying to do triaged here. Uh, one thing that we do know is that benefits for gig workers and people who are self-employed, um, are ending very soon. So if people don't get their unemployment benefits restored soon, they're going to miss out on money that is coming from the federal government that will expire at the end of December, taking an already desperate situation for these communities and making it worse. Of course, right now there are negotiations going on in DC, but there hasn't been any traction and over, um, I believe four months in terms of making sure that people actually have money to get through this pandemic, which has only sown shown signs of worsening. Speaker 1: 10:10 I've been speaking with KPBS reporter, max Rivlin Nadler, max. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 5: 10:22 [inaudible].
