Excerpted from The Los Angeles Times
By Patrick McGreevy
Lawmakers including Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Laguna Beach) voiced concern Thursday about the audit findings.
“This audit makes it clear that EDD lost billions of taxpayer dollars not because they were outwitted by criminal masterminds, but because of basic failures and downright inexcusable mistakes,” said Petrie-Norris, chairwoman of the Assembly Accountability and Administrative Review Committee.
Last year, state officials said they had paid $400 million on fraudulent claims in the names of prison inmates, but the new audit more than doubles that total and puts it at $810 million, attributing it to the EDD failing to cross match the names of unemployment benefit claimants with lists of incarcerated people. That cross matching did not begin for months after the first case of jail fraud was discovered.