Fraud is up among people trying to get unemployment benefits in North Carolina. That’s according to the Employment Security Commission. From the Herald-Sun:
The rise in unemployment in North Carolina has sparked an increase in the number of people trying to cheat the system, and the problem will get even more costly because of a lack of investigators, state officials said.
The Charlotte Observer reports that investigators with the Employment Security Commission found 5,044 fraudulent overpayments worth more than $13.3 million last year, up 13 percent from the year before and 24 percent from 2004. The state recovered only about half of the money last year.
The state estimates it has paid nearly $52.7 million in fraudulent benefit payments over the past five years and recovered $26.5 million.
“It is very easy for someone who is perhaps desperate — and dishonest,” said Marvin Francis, an ESC fraud investigator based in Charlotte. “I can sympathize. Who, these days, has six months’ savings in the bank? I don’t. But it’s a society of laws. We can’t just do whatever we think is right.”
I hope folks will think twice before assuming that people who find themselves in a tough spot will put cheating at the top of their options. Certainly some do, as the data above reveals. But as someone who grew up in a working-class family that was routinely strapped for cash, I can tell you firsthand that cheating and stealing was never something my hardworking dad considered — even when he was out of a job. Family and church stepped in to help while my dad pounded the pavement for work.
