Hunter
02/13/23
The State of Iowa paid out $129 million in unwarranted jobless benefits last year, doubling the figure of a year before.
Iowa Capital Dispatch reports that newly disclosed state data from Iowa Workforce Development shows 89% of the overpayments made last year were not the result of unemployment fraud, but of state decisions that were reversed on appeal or innocent mistakes made by Iowans seeking benefits.
Overpayments resulting from fraud more than tripled in the last year, from just over $4 million in 2021 to $13.8 million in 2022.
Iowa Workforce Development says individuals who didn’t realize they became ineligible for benefits as soon as they were hired instead of when they got their first check accounted for some of the non-fraud cases. They added that the spike in overpayments is due to the agency’s continued investigation of pandemic-related claims.
The agency recovered over $17 million in fraud and non-fraud cases in 2022; in a written statement to Iowa Capital Dispatch, they said they won’t disclose the techniques they use to detect and prevent fraudulent claims to keep it from being easier for fraudsters to defeat their processes.