Thousands of federal workers applied for and received COVID-19-related unemployment benefits and continued getting their regular paychecks during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who’s calling for a federal investigation to identify the offenders and recover the tax dollars improperly paid to them.
“Some were even paid overtime at the same time [they were] claiming to have lost wages due to the pandemic. Others were so blatant, they actually applied for jobless benefits from their work computers.
“In addition to fleecing taxpayers, these unscrupulous bureaucrats have also tarnished the reputation of the other dedicated civil servants, many of whom worked long hours in essential jobs during the pandemic.”
More than $5 trillion in federally funded COVID-related benefits—including $716 billion in state-administered unemployment compensation—were authorized in response to the pandemic, which began in January 2020. More than 1 million Americans have died as a result of COVID-19.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz is chairman of PRAC.
Ernst also made public her Jan. 27 letter to Horowitz calling for a government-wide investigation to identify all federal workers who improperly got COVID-related unemployment checks and recover the money paid to them. Failure to report such benefits could also expose such individuals to the prospect of tax fraud prosecution.
In her letter to Horowitz, Ernst noted that PRAC “has already identified tens of thousands of federal employees who applied for and received small business loans for which they were not eligible.”
“I would encourage you to conduct a similar review to determine how many unscrupulous bureaucrats wrongfully took advantage of the federal pandemic unemployment and lost wages assistance programs,” the letter reads. “There is ample evidence that thousands of federal employees working for various federal agencies may have fraudulently applied for and received payments from these programs.”
Ernst noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is prominent among the federal departments and agencies that have been identified as having civil servants who received COVID-related unemployment benefits in addition to their regular paychecks.
“Nearly 2,000 [DHS] employees or fraudsters may have been paid more than $2 million in fraudulent COVID-19 unemployment benefits, according to a review by the Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), for example,” she wrote. “The OIG determined 935 of the DHS employees signed up and approved to receive Lost Wages Assistance were ineligible and another 874 were potentially ineligible for the program. In fact, 336 of the DHS employees claiming to be unemployed received overtime pay.”
The ineligible DHS workers discovered by the OIG worked at the Secret Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Transportation Security Administration, and other components of the department.
“I hope this money can be recovered, and, to deter those who might ever think of trying to do this again in the future, those who abused the public trust will have their federal employment terminated,” Ernst told Horowitz.