Speaker 1: It's Friday, January eight. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Throughout the pandemic, many have had issues with claiming unemployment benefits,
Speaker 1: some waiting months for payments, but there has also been
Speaker 1: scammers cashing in on fraud in the system to the
Speaker 1: tune of thirty two billion dollars. Many of the scammers
Speaker 1: are coming out of Nigeria, but they can't do it
Speaker 1: alone and use mule networks to get it done. Many
Speaker 1: of the victims are also people who are employed but
Speaker 1: have had their identity stolen. Nick pens And Stadler, reporter
Speaker 1: at USA Today, joins us for how scammers are cashing
Speaker 1: in on unemployment. Thanks for joining us, Nick, They're happy
Speaker 1: to be here. We've been doing some stories recently about
Speaker 1: unemployment benefits and how you know it's taking months over
Speaker 1: a million people months and months to actually receive any
Speaker 1: unemployment aid. Obviously, there's a bunch of backlogs they're working
Speaker 1: through to try to root out any fraud that's going on.
Speaker 1: And then I came across your ard goal talking about
Speaker 1: how scammers have siphoned off about thirty six billion dollars
Speaker 1: in fraudulent unemployment payments from the United States, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of an all too familiar theme. I guess.
Speaker 1: You know, it's people that are kind of imposters, posing
Speaker 1: as someone else, throwing out some of the information that
Speaker 1: they can buy some of these hacks databases pretty easy,
Speaker 1: it seems like for these scammers. And you actually got
Speaker 1: to speak to somebody who was involved in some of this,
Speaker 1: So Nick, tell us a little bit about what we're
Speaker 1: seeing and how you know people are just scamming the
Speaker 1: unemployment benefits. Sure, I think it's important to think about
Speaker 1: that hacked information. You know, it's your data breaches. You
Speaker 1: hear about that in the news a lot, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people shrug it off when it
Speaker 1: happens because nothing immediately happens to you. There's and there
Speaker 1: aren't really the consequences until maybe down the line. And
Speaker 1: this is exactly that scenario where compromise information has been
Speaker 1: floating kind of on the dark web for years maybe,
Speaker 1: and now the bad guys are exploiting it through this
Speaker 1: series of transactions to get this money. And the way
Speaker 1: it works is they're using a stolen social Security number
Speaker 1: and a day of birth and a name that I'll
Speaker 1: match to file for unemployment in that person's name. So
Speaker 1: it's not like synthetic fake person. It's a real person
Speaker 1: who's had their identity stolen with a bad guy using
Speaker 1: it to file for the unemployment. Yeah, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: need a little bit of extra information, you know, the
Speaker 1: office is asking you for other stuff and in that way,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll go on some sites like family Tree
Speaker 1: now truth finder to get other information that they might
Speaker 1: need to be able to fill out these applications. And
Speaker 1: you know, they're very successful. I think one of the
Speaker 1: people that you spoke to that has been partaking in
Speaker 1: some of this said that one in six attempts are
Speaker 1: successful for them, and a lot of these scammeras are
Speaker 1: coming out of Nigeria. That was the case for the
Speaker 1: person you spoke to. What was that like, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: had this pretty rare opportunity to talk to a scammera.
Speaker 1: They're called threat actors by the cybersecurity folks who deal
Speaker 1: with them, and the firm we interviewed, you know, spends
Speaker 1: time with these people to try to learn how they're
Speaker 1: how they're running these scams, and they pay them for
Speaker 1: the information so the scammers are all too happy to
Speaker 1: share a little bit because they share it widely. There
Speaker 1: are these channels that share these scripts and these methods,
Speaker 1: and they're all in on it. So this guy came
Speaker 1: on an interview with us and walked us through each
Speaker 1: step of the process. And you know, we're able to
Speaker 1: ask them, you know what happens when they're pressing for
Speaker 1: your identity and how much time do you spend on it?
Speaker 1: Do you do this all day? And this one gentleman
Speaker 1: told us he does. He does it all day long.
Speaker 1: He takes a break during the day and he's made
Speaker 1: about fifty dollars since the pandemic started, just on unemployment scams.
Speaker 1: So it's this full time job. One of the interesting
Speaker 1: questions you asked too if they felt any remorse for this,
Speaker 1: and he said, no, not at all. We don't know
Speaker 1: these people, we don't know who or where they are,
Speaker 1: so to them, it doesn't bother me one bit, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the same case with some of these romance
Speaker 1: scams that are also tied in with this. So a
Speaker 1: lot of times to extract the money from the system,
Speaker 1: they're not actually getting paid from, you know, the state
Speaker 1: unemployment system. To the scammer, it has to go through
Speaker 1: to a few different channels, so they often exploit people
Speaker 1: that they've been running as either a romance scam victim
Speaker 1: or maybe some other type of email based scam to
Speaker 1: receive the money in the United States before sending it
Speaker 1: overseas to them. You contacted all fifty states to see
Speaker 1: how much fraud money had been paid out. Not everybody
Speaker 1: got back, obviously, we heard some stories. California said that
Speaker 1: they suspect as much as two billion dollars was paid
Speaker 1: out in improper payments. One of the states you focus
Speaker 1: on heavily, and this is Washington. For a time they
Speaker 1: had to stop sending out some money so that they
Speaker 1: can catch back up. I think in two weeks when
Speaker 1: everything started, when the Cares Act had been passed, they
Speaker 1: found about six hundred million dollars had been paid out already.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit of how these states
Speaker 1: were handling it. If you remember, Washington was kind of
Speaker 1: first in the United States for getting hit so hard
Speaker 1: with the pandemic and shutting things down, so that led
Speaker 1: to that big surgeon unemployment claims. So fraudsters took notice
Speaker 1: of that. They tried to exploit and hammer the Washington
Speaker 1: system with all of these claims that were bogus, and
Speaker 1: it took a few weeks before Washington State realized, you know,
Speaker 1: one a ton of these are fraud and two we
Speaker 1: need to catch up with our systems to flag them
Speaker 1: and then try to get the money back. So that
Speaker 1: particular state had been sending money through green Dot accounts,
Speaker 1: which is a mobile banking app, and those state folks say,
Speaker 1: the people who normally use those accounts are exactly who
Speaker 1: they're trying to help. It's usually the unbanked, the underbanked.
Speaker 1: They don't go to a normal brick and mortar bank
Speaker 1: every day. But fraudster is again exploited that and use
Speaker 1: some of the flexibilities of those mobile banking accounts to
Speaker 1: get the money and get it quickly and then transfer
Speaker 1: it before the state could realize what was happening. What
Speaker 1: do we know about how much money some of these
Speaker 1: states might have recovered, because in the Washington example, they
Speaker 1: noticed about six hundred million that was stolen. They were
Speaker 1: able to recover about three d and fifty million of that,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit more. But are these states disclosing
Speaker 1: any of that or how do we find some of
Speaker 1: that out. Yeah, states are much more transparent about the
Speaker 1: money they have gotten back at the moment the suspected
Speaker 1: fraud they stopped. They're less transparent about what's gone out
Speaker 1: the door that they don't think they'll ever get back.
Speaker 1: So New York has publicized that they've gotten millions back.
Speaker 1: It really depends on what type of scam was being operated.
Speaker 1: So if it was money sent directly to a bank,
Speaker 1: and the state can go right to that bank and
Speaker 1: say we know this is fraud. This is how we know.
Speaker 1: Here's proof, the bank will send it right back. The
Speaker 1: FBI is not involved, there isn't much law enforcement, no
Speaker 1: civil suits. It's just transferred right back. Things get a
Speaker 1: lot more complicated if that money has already been transferred
Speaker 1: or gone through a few different layers, and it's much
Speaker 1: less likely that they'll ever see that money back. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting aspects of this whole thing. You know.
Speaker 1: Part of it is is that the scammers need actual
Speaker 1: people to file some of these fictitious claims, which is
Speaker 1: kind of crazy, you know, who would subject to themselves
Speaker 1: to some of this. But they use kind of these
Speaker 1: mule networks and you mentioned, you know, mobile banking apps
Speaker 1: and cash apps and things, and they use these things
Speaker 1: to get around some of the traditional banking methods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so these money mules are really a problem in the
Speaker 1: United States. The FBI has key down this during the
Speaker 1: pandemic because they're either winning mules and automating unwitting mules
Speaker 1: that either they know what's going on and they don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. And a lot of times they're elderly.
Speaker 1: They've been contacted for maybe years with someone and they
Speaker 1: think that it's you know, their friend online and then
Speaker 1: now the moment is right where the scammers saying I'm
Speaker 1: in some trouble. I'm going to get some money transferred
Speaker 1: into your account, and I need you to transfer it
Speaker 1: to me, you know, via PayPal. That's how they get them,
Speaker 1: because they need it to be laundered from you know,
Speaker 1: and they elicit piece of cash to bitcoin, which can't
Speaker 1: be traced or a normal a t M. So we
Speaker 1: saw cases of unemployment money being paid out to regular
Speaker 1: bank accounts and then withdrawn and cash packaged up and
Speaker 1: mailed across the country to another mule before it was
Speaker 1: sent overseas well. And as you mean too, a lot
Speaker 1: of these victims are people with stolen identities. You had
Speaker 1: an example in your article of a woman who was
Speaker 1: currently working. She had a job, but she kept getting,
Speaker 1: you know, notifications or messages saying that, oh, we sent
Speaker 1: you some unemployment money. It's been flagged as FROD you
Speaker 1: need to pay it back. And she's like, well, I
Speaker 1: never received any of this money. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: go through this process. I have a job. And she
Speaker 1: had to have her employer get involved to help stop that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the most frustrating part of this for a lot
Speaker 1: of people is fully employed people finding out that someone
Speaker 1: had filed for unemployment in their name just creates a
Speaker 1: huge headache for them. So that was one of the
Speaker 1: tips coming out of this is even if you are
Speaker 1: employed and you don't expect to lose your job or
Speaker 1: need unemployment, you can still go and set up your
Speaker 1: profile in a state unemployment site just to kind of
Speaker 1: lock it down and secure it so no one else
Speaker 1: can go put your Social Security number and birthdate in
Speaker 1: and to access it. So that's the one thing you
Speaker 1: can do to try to protect yourself. We've heard tons
Speaker 1: of stories of this is like, this is how people
Speaker 1: are interacting with this where they don't file for unemployment
Speaker 1: they never have, they don't think they're a victim, but
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, someone's using their identity to pull
Speaker 1: off this scam. It's just a really unfortunate situation because
Speaker 1: we're hearing stories from these people that legitimately need unemployment
Speaker 1: aid and it's taking months and months to work through
Speaker 1: the backlog to work through these fraudulent checks. You know,
Speaker 1: if somebody gets flagged, it takes months to resolve some
Speaker 1: of these things, and in the meantime, not always obviously,
Speaker 1: but sometimes these scammers are getting through and getting some
Speaker 1: of that money. So that's just so unfortunate to hear.
Speaker 1: But these are kind of the problems that these agencies
Speaker 1: are facing in the background. So we'll definitely keep a
Speaker 1: monitor on this to see what else comes of it.
Speaker 1: Nick pens and Stadler, reporter at USA Today. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm Oscar
Speaker 1: Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort
Speaker 1: Today's big news stories and check me out on the
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