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How to Handle Fraudulent Unemployment Claims

With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, fraudulent unemployment claims for active employees have been on the rise across the country.

Fraudsters are using multiple different avenues to obtain employee’s ‘Personally Identifying Information’ (PII), such as: Email phishing schemes, purchasing stolen PII, obtaining PII from prior data breaches, cold call impersonation scams, and physical theft of PII data.

Unfortunately, there is no magic solution to this problem. However, there are some steps that employers and individuals can take to reduce and respond to such incidents:

Employers should:

  • Inform the employee of the fraudulent claim
  • Contest the claim
  • Notify their states unemployment office
  • Educate all employees to be aware of potential fraudulent unemployment claims (Ex. If the employee receives a debit card or other documentation in the mail from their states unemployment office, and ways to protect themselves from identity theft
  • Contact your IT department to ensure the affected employees’ information has not been compromised or exposed to outside sources (Ex. Birthdays, social security numbers, etc.)

Employees should:

  • Report any notices they receive to the Human Resources department
  • Notify their states unemployment office
  • Monitor their personal accounts (Ex. Bank accounts, social media, personal email accounts)
  • Ensure documents are properly stored and deleted, if necessary (Ex. Tax documents or other items containing PPI, such as social security numbers and birthday)

Did you know? In addition to unemployment administration, OneDigital offers a range of holistic HR solutions that can be customized to enable leaders to embrace the shifts that businesses are facing during these extraordinary times.

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