Agency: Nearly 87,000 bogus unemployment claims filed in Washington state

Emergency actions taken last May to halt a massive fraud in Washington’s unemployment system prevented at least $200 million in additional losses on top of the more than half-a-billion dollars taken by scammers, officials said Monday.

But officials also acknowledged that the sophisticated scheme, which ultimately siphoned off $576 million in state and federal benefits, started in early March, two months before the Employment Security Department (ESD) abruptly halted all payments to investigate the fraud.