SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KERO) — Senate Republican Leader Shannon Grove penned a letter on Friday to Governor Gavin Newsom requesting immediate action to combat unemployment insurance fraud.
In the letter, she says: "As the media and law enforcement have dug deeper into the rampant fraud there are troubling revelations that EDD not only exercises very little oversight but generally lacks the resources to reasonably detect or investigate fraudulent claims. In fact, as CDAA noted in their letter, the state, unlike numerous other states, does not cross-check UI claims against records for county jails, state prisons, or other public facilities."
The rest of the letter is shown below.
In addition, Grove introduced legislation to help stop EDD fraud, Senate Bill 39:
This bill would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide the names and social security numbers of current inmates to the Employment Development Department for the purposes of preventing payments on fraudulent claims for unemployment compensation benefits. Because this bill would expand the group of persons who can be convicted for knowingly furnishing state summary criminal history information to unauthorized persons, it would expand the scope of an existing crime and therefore impose a state-mandated local program.
This bill would require, for the purpose of preventing payments on fraudulent claims for unemployment compensation benefits, for any unemployment compensation benefits paid on and after July 1, 2021, the Director of Employment Development to verify with the information provided by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation before making any payment of unemployment compensation benefits that the claimant is not an inmate currently incarcerated in the state prisons.
You can read the full text of the bill online.
Grove 2020 EDD Insurance Fraud Gov Letter
