New surge in Florida jobless assistance applications may be driven by fraud

Rob Wile

A recent surge in new unemployment assistance applications has likely been sparked by fraudulent filings, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) said Thursday.

Each week, the department must report its estimate of initial applications to the U.S. Department of Labor, which releases a nationwide unemployment report every Thursday.

On Thursday morning, the labor department reported claims in Florida remained at their highest level since August for the second straight week, rising from 62,818 to 71,046.

On Jan. 28, the labor department reported claims in Florida had unexpectedly climbed from 39,226 to an initial estimate of 57,824. The 39,226 count itself represented a significant revision from the 26,599 initially reported Jan. 21.

In an email Wednesday, DEO officials for the first time indicated it was likely sparked by fraudulent filings. The email was a response to a Miami Herald query about the data flux.

Over the past few weeks, the officials said, DEO had “taken additional proactive steps to mitigate fraudulent claims in the CONNECT system.”

In an interview, DEO spokesperson Emilie Oglesby said the department Tuesday night deployed additional fraud-detection software on the mobile app all new claimants must now use to file for state assistance. She said the state is still investigating the extent of the problem, and she could not say how many fraudulent claims may have been processed and paid out.

“The state takes this very seriously,” Oglesby said. “We have noticed a significant increase in the number of new claims over the past couple weeks.”

She said the increase was not affecting the ability of current unemployment assistance recipients to receive their payments on time — though she reminded them that they must re-certify their eligibility every two weeks.

In an interview, state Rep. Anna Eskamani of Orange County, who has been closely monitoring failures in the state’s unemployment system, said that beyond obvious concerns about fraud, any undue payments impact the state’s unemployment trust fund, through which the state unemployment assistance is financed.

A depleted trust fund, in turn, will ultimately affect Florida businesses’ unemployment payroll tax rates.

“It’s definitely a reflection of how broken the system is,” Eskamani said.

Florida’s unemployment system has come in for heavy criticism. A June 2020 letter from U.S. Senate Democrats called its performance “uniquely poor in its abject inability to assist millions of Florida residents who have applied for and continue to await unemployment benefits.” In Senate testimony that followed, former Democratic state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez said an earlier audit of the system was “on the governor’s desk” when Ron DeSantis came into office in 2018.

Since the outset of the pandemic, the state has paid approximately $21.6 billion in assistance to about 2.2 million claimants.

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