...and I'm betting its actually much more.

Link

US watchdog admits $46 BILLION in pandemic unemployment benefits was stolen by fraudsters using the SSNs of DEAD people and prisoners - year after saying it was just $16billion

Fraudsters stole nearly $46billion in unlawful unemployment claims during the pandemic, the Labor Department concluded on Thursday - while warning that the actual figure may be even higher.

Criminals used inventive measures to access the COVID benefits, with more than 205,000 Social Security numbers that belonged to dead people being used to claim the cash.

Some schemes saw the Social Security numbers of prisoners being used, despite them being ineligible for the unemployment benefits.

The latest figure is more than double the earlier estimate, issued by the Labor Department last year, when they concluded that $16 billion had been stolen.

Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat representing Oregon who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said the new report proved the urgency of improving security checks on unemployment benefits.

'I've long said we need a national set of technology and security standards for state systems to better prevent this kind of fraud, and we're going to keep working to get our reforms passed,' he said.

The Labor Department inspector general said 190,000 investigations have been opened into fraud since the pandemic began.

....really? using dead people to leverage for additional benefits and outcomes, where have I heard of this before?