The California Employment Development Department has suspended 1.4 million unemployment claims as it deals with fraud in its coronavirus unemployment relief program.
The EDD said it examined existing claims from people who said they lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and found approximately 3.5 million "potentially fraudulent" claims, according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle.
In order to battle the fraud, payment was suspended for about 1.4 million claims until they could be verified as legitimate.
Almost 2 million claims have already been disqualified, said the Chronicle.
The state of California has processed over 16 million unemployment claims since Governor Gavin Newsom ordered businesses to close in March to slow the spread of COVID-19.
According to KTLA, the department has been swindled out of millions of dollars in pandemic relief unemployment funds that went to fraudulent claims, some in the name of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Some unemployment benefits payments were sent to inmates in prisons and jails, including some on death row in California.
Bank of America, which issues EDD benefit debit cards, told state lawmakers in December that they had identified nearly 345,000 fraudulent claims.
Those claims were estimated to be worth $2 billion and the figure is expected to go much higher as the EDD continues to examine existing claims.
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