by Jack
In what could be the largest scam ever perpetrated on a single state, the grossly mismanaged and obviously incompetent State of California failed to notice tens of thousands of fraudulent unemployment claims made by prison inmates. Some of these characters were infamous death row inmates and nary a red flag ever went up.
This scam grew from a trickle to a torrent over many months and somehow nobody in State government noticed? This part is beyond incompetent, it’s criminally stupid. But, the inmates sure took notice, and the fraudulent filings spread across the entire CA prison system.
It is now the best estimate of the CA District Attorney’s Association that in excess of one billion dollars has been paid out by the state for fraudulent unemployment benefits.
The problem is in layers of bureaucracy in which not one administrator is held accountable. The EDD of CA didn’t even notice the missing billion until an outside agency brought it to their attention. You know there is something terribly wrong with the government when a billion dollars can be stolen from the taxpayers and nobody in authority even notices.
“At least 35,000 unemployment claims have been fraudulently made on behalf of prison inmates between March and August, costing the state $140 million in paid out benefits, California officials said Tuesday. The claims, which the Sacramento County district attorney called “one of the biggest fraud of taxpayer dollars in California history,” even included one in the name of convicted murderer Scott Peterson.
In some cases, prosecutors were tipped off by listening in on recorded phone calls from prison as inmates bragged about how they were gaming the system to collect unemployment benefits.
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert and other prosecutors said the problem was compounded by dysfunction at the California Employment Development Department, which they said does not check unemployment claims against a list of prison inmates, as many other states do.”
Why didn’t CA top cop, Attorney General Kamal Harris catch this massive fraud before it got completely out of control? Guess she was too busy trying to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.
I am reminded of the movie “Forbidden Planet”, wherein an alien race is discovered to have created technology that destroyed them.
Electronic voting. Right.
And then there is this–
“Many users might not realize the scope of the data that Plaid receives. Plaid’s Transactions API gives both Plaid and app developers access to a user’s entire transaction and balance history, including a geolocation and category for each purchase made. Plaid’s other APIs grant access to users’ liabilities, including credit card debt and student loans; their investments, including individual stocks and bonds; and identity information, including name, address, email, and phone number.
. . .
Visa is … acquiring everything Plaid has ever collected and—more importantly—access to data flows from everyone who uses a Plaid-connected app. It can monetize the data in ways Plaid never could. And the move completely side-steps restrictions on old-fashioned data sales.”
From here–
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/12/how-were-bought-and-sold-every-day-by.html