OKLAHOMA CITY – The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission received a record 423,225 claims for unemployment benefits by April 21.
The agency has deemed 223,598 of those claims eligible and 199,627 ineligible, according to OESC public information officer Trey Davis.
The OESC has approved 210,457 Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims and 13,141 Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims. The agency was in the process of paying 178,592 of those claims on April 21 and had a backlog of 45,006 approved pending payments.
The rollout of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance will provide an additional 13 weeks of benefits to individuals who exhausted regular unemployment insurance benefits. Those claims may be backdated as far as March 29 and continue through the week ending December 26.
SW Oklahomans File 10K Claims for Benefits
More than 10,170 claims for unemployment benefits were filed in southwest Oklahoma last month, OESC records reflect. Those included 6,400 in Comanche County, 1,927 in Stephens County, 848 in Jackson County, 376 in Tillman County, 289 in Kiowa County, 285 in Cotton County, and 52 in Harmon County.
The OESC reported paying $5,473,780 in unemployment benefits to 5,694 Comanche County claimants last month. Two-thirds of those filers received their first benefit check last month.
In Stephens County the OESC paid $1,474,270 in jobless benefits last month to 1,593 claimants, 60%of whom received a benefit check for the first time.
The OESC paid $337,54 in benefits last month to 481 claimants in Jackson County, 64% of whom were first-time recipients.
Almost 200K Claims Denied by OESC
The OESC denied nearly 200,000 claims, 47% of all applications it received. Those included 181,358 claims for unemployment insurance benefits (46% of the 391,815 UI applications) and 18,269 claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (58% of the 31,410 PUA applications), Davis said.
A denied claim is one in which the applicant was not eligible for regular unemployment insurance “for a variety of reasons,” Davis said.
The claimant may have been fired, voluntarily quit, or the employer protested on other grounds and the claim was adjudicated as not monetarily eligible.
The claim may have been fraudulent and denied.
The claimant may not be eligible for regular unemployment insurance benefits but had to submit an application to the OESC first before applying for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. These include gig workers, independent contractors and other self-employed individuals.
An applicant whose claim was denied may be able to revive the claim with the assistance of a Tier 2 OESC claims agent. “It’s certainly possible that inaccurate or incomplete responses resulted in the claim being denied,” Davis said. However, the applicant “may have to go through the adjudication process, which can take several weeks based on the current caseload.”
More complex claims, including many of the PUA claims, are being handled by OESC personnel “who have the experience and knowledge base necessary to resolve these specific issues,” Davis said.
Tier 2 agents typically handle claims ranging from incorrect answers provided on an application, to insufficient documentation provided in support of a claim.
“The system has safeguards in place to stop claims from being processed incorrectly or fraudulently,” Davis said. “Heretofore, these claims required manual processing,” he said. While the process is continuing and additional agents are being trained to assist in claims resolution, “the agency is working to automate part of this process to resolve the volume of claims more efficiently,” he said.
Prior to the Covid-19 and oil industry crises, complex claims “never amounted to more than double-digit totals of all claims filed, and manual resolution was not a challenge,” Davis said. But given the numbers the agency is facing today, “The ability to automate the process is critical to achieving efficient and effective processing outcomes to move eligible claimants into pay status.”
OESC personnel worked Monday, despite it being a holiday, because the agency “felt it was important to continue its effort to contact claimants with unresolved issues related to their applications for unemployment benefits,” Davis said.
Fraud Claims Investigated; OESC Director Resigns
According to The Oklahoman newspaper, Jerry Moore, the state’s chief information officer, wrote about discovering that more than 80,000 claims were suspected of being fraudulent because they had invalid area codes for telephone numbers.
Payments were blocked on those suspicious claims, but not before 41,087 of them received weekly payments that totaled $17.4 million in one week, Moore wrote in an email.
A task force comprised of the OESC, the state Attorney General’s office, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating those applications, Davis said.
A report issued recently by the U.S. Secret Service indicated several states, including Oklahoma, were targeted by a Nigerian fraud ring. “I suspect many of these are part of that investigation,” Davis said.
By May 16 the OESC’s fraud unit had identified 14,856 fictitious claims. “These claims are apart from those being investigated by the task force,” Davis said. “Most of these are from employers notifying OESC the claim is fictitious or from individuals notifying OESC they had not filed an application for unemployment benefits,” he added.
Meanwhile, Robin Roberson resigned as executive director of the OESC. She tendered her resignation last Friday after being encouraged to step down, she said.
In addition, the commission voted 4-1 to turn over control of the agency’s information technology services to the state Office of Management and Enterprise Services, which manages IT services for most state agencies now.
Nigerian Fraud Ring Targets Oklahoma
Federal officials revealed that Oklahoma and at least six other states have been targeted by “a well-organized Nigerian fraud ring” that has “mounted an immense, sophisticated attack on U.S. unemployment systems,” The New York Times reported May 17.
The fraudsters have created a network that has “siphoned millions of dollars in payments that were intended to avert an economic collapse, according to federal authorities,” the Times wrote.
The attackers “have used detailed information about U.S. citizens, such as Social Security numbers that may have been obtained from cyber hacks of years past, to file claims on behalf of people who have not been laid off, officials said. The attack has exploited state unemployment systems at a time when they are straining to process a crush of claims from an employment crisis unmatched since the Great Depression” of the 1930s, the Times reported.
In a memo obtained by The New York Times, investigators from the U.S. Secret Service said Washington State had emerged as the primary target so far, “but there was also evidence of attacks in Oklahoma, Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Wyoming.”