During COVID Illinois Paid Tens Of Millions To The Dead
As the COVID-19 emergency ends, we’re learning more and more about how much taxpayer money was stolen in the name of relief. The latest example comes from Illinois where we are learning the state paid out billions in improper payments. Among those who received money from the state were the dead and prisoners.
From Fox News:
The state of Illinois improperly paid out billions of unemployment tax dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic, with tens of millions going to people who were either dead or in prison, according to a newly released audit.
The Illinois auditor general on Wednesday published a report that showed how the state agency that distributes unemployment benefits issued “overpayments” to the tune of $5.2 billion in fraudulent or excessive claims from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2022. The report is the fullest accounting yet of the large-scale fraud and overpayments that occurred in Illinois during the pandemic.
Of the $5.2 billion, the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) overpaid by about $2 billion for regular unemployment insurance and by $3.2 billion for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) put in place following the outbreak of COVID.
Overall, $2.8 billion has been classified as identity theft – money not considered recoverable since it can’t be collected from the identity theft victim. According to the audit, only about a 10th of the total $5.2 billion has been recovered.
Unemployment surged in Illinois, as it did in the rest of the country, at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 after Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued stay-at-home orders in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. Businesses were forced to cut back their operations, if not shut down, leaving many Illinois residents out of work and creating an unprecedented level of demand for unemployment insurance.
As we’re learning more and more about how much money was stolen during COVID, it is becoming clear this is one of the largest instances of taxpayer fraud ever. The whole purpose of the relief was to pay people not to work and many people who shouldn’t have been able to collect the money did.
Not only was this one of the largest threats to personal freedom, it was an all you can eat buffet for crooks. The government was in a rush to get money out and in people’s hands that large scale theft like this was expected.
The thing to do now is to first make sure that something like this never happens again. Not only the massive fraud but the assault on civil liberties and on the ethic of self-reliance.
Governments should try to recover as much of the stolen money as possible and prosecute those who did steal. But in many instances recovery will be impossible.
COVID may no longer be an important news story but the consequences of those dark days in 2020 will remain with us for a long time.
