Western sees boost in fraudulent unemployment claims during COVID crisis

May 7, 2020

Western Colleagues,

Western is seeing an increasing number of fraudulent unemployment claims being submitted to the state.  Western's Human Resources (HR) is responsible for responding to the Employment Security Department (ESD) when employees file for unemployment.  HR carefully reviews each claim as they prepare a response to ESD.  Over the last few weeks, HR has received a number of fraudulent claims using employees' names, social security numbers,and other sensitive information.  Fortunately, our process is able to identify these fraudulent claims and has allowed us to take prompt action. 

If HR identifies a fraudulent claim, HR ceases any further processing and notifies ESD, the affected employee and Western's Information Technology Services Department(ITS).  ITS verifies there has not been any unusual account activities indicating the employee's password has been stolen.  At this time, we are pleased to report no evidence has been discovered indicating passwords have been compromised.  This leads ITS to believe the personally identifiable information used to file the claims was obtained via some non-WWU sources such as the 2017 Equifax credit bureau breach where 147 million consumers had information stolen.

Because employees' personal information is being used for these fraudulent purposes, ITS recommends affected employees review their credit reports and place a free credit freeze on their credit files at the big three credit bureaus. While a credit freeze will not stop the creation of fraudulent unemployment claims, it could help protect a person's credit if their data is being used in other damaging ways.

Western is not alone in this unfortunate circumstance. Many other state agencies and higher education institutions have been impacted. ESD continues to review and monitor the situation.

Additional resources are below:  

Employment Security Department: 

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Consumer Information: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/

Washington State Office of the Attorney General – security freeze procedures:  https://www.atg.wa.gov/security-freeze-procedures

 

Thank you,

Chyerl Wolfe-Lee & Chuck Lanham