Inside Michigan's faulty unemployment system that hit thousands with fraud
Source: The Guardian
Inside Michigan's faulty unemployment system that hit thousands with fraud
Ryan Felton in Detroit
Friday 12 February 2016 13.44 GMT
In the weeks before Christmas 2014, Kevin Grifka received a letter from the state of Michigan, claiming he fraudulently collected $12,000 in unemployment benefits.
Grifka, an electrician who lives in metro Detroit, had his entire federal income tax refund garnished by the Michigan unemployment insurance agency (UIA). In the midst of the holiday season, he was faced with repaying a five-figure sum.
“To see your wife cry at night is not cool,” Grifka said last year. “The kids, I never told them, they’re too young to even realize, but you look at four months, five months almost, on the phone dealing with people trying to get basically nowhere, and it’s very disturbing.”
But Grifka hadn’t actually committed insurance fraud. He was one of thousands of people, many out of work, wrongly charged by an automated unemployment insurance fraud detection system that began in 2013 under Michigan governor Rick Snyder.
Officials have at least partially conceded the program had problems: last month, the state revealed in a court filing that it quietly scaled back the $47m program, in the wake of intense media scrutiny. Now, all determinations are reviewed and issued by employees, a spokesperson told the Guardian.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/12/michigan-unemployment-insurance-benefit-automated-system-fraud-penalties
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in Jail for 'Governor' Snyder.
