OKLAHOMA CITY – Because of the coronavirus pandemic coupled with the severe downturn in the energy sector, many companies and organizations in this state have received several bogus claims fraudulently seeking unemployment benefits.
A Norman charity has been bombarded with more than 400 of them. And the count increases daily.
“This is a waste of time and people and is super frustrating,” said April Dawn Heiple, a Chickasha native who is executive director of Food and Shelter for Friends. “I’ve called and called but cannot speak to any person who can help me figure out how to stop this from continuing.”
On its website, Food and Shelter for Friends says its mission is “simple... we feed people who are hungry and help those living homeless make their way back home.” The charitable organization has nine employees.
FAKE CLAIM LETTERS ‘JUST KEPT COMING’
The first fake claim arrived in early April, Heiple said, “and they just kept coming. We got a stack of about 60 of them this week,” she said Wednesday.
Several of the alleged claimants had the same last name.
“This week it was from people whose last name was ‘Cheong’,” Heiple said. The first names varied: Charles, Susan, Stephanie and Enrique, for example. Last week the nom de plume was Lewis, including Larry and Mark, et al, she said. And there were several claims from a Sarah Anderson, with several different spellings of the first name.
“It’s bizarre,” Heiple said. “These are people I’ve never heard of.”
No addresses are given for the fake claimants. “The only thingIgetisanameanda Social Security number,” Heiple said. “There are no similarities” among the myriad claims.
Upon receiving notification of the first fake claim
Heiple typed a response letter informing the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission “that this person never worked for us and it was a mistake,” she recalled.
“The next day we received a stack of 18 of them.”
She said she placed repeated telephone calls to the OESC “but I never could get a person on the phone.” Then she found an email address for reporting fraudulent unemployment claims, so she scanned the bogus claim letters and emailed them.
She said she received a response just once. “The woman told me, ‘We’ll put a stop on these payments.’”
AGENCY INUNDATED IN FRAUDULENT CLAIMS
Heiple continued to receive fraudulent claims and continued to notify the OESC, “asking somebody to please call me,” she said. “I was afraid our unemployment insurance rate was going to go up.”
After she posted an appeal on Facebook, somebody sent her a link to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s website. A form is posted there for individuals and businesses that receive bogus claims; after the form is completed, the claim will be directed to the proper law enforcement agency.
Also, her state legislator, Rep. Emily Virgin, D-Norman, contacted Heiple and informed her that “there are protections that will prevent us from being penalized, but there is so much fraud in the system that there’s not a lot we can do.”
Trey Davis, an OESC spokesman, reported that at one point there were approximately 80,000 claims suspected of being fraudulent. A task force consisting of the OESC, the Attorney General’s office, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the FBI is investigating the suspicious claims.
A report put out recently by the U.S. Secret Service indicated several states, including Oklahoma, were targeted by a Nigerian fraud ring. “I suspect many of these claims are part of that investigation,” Davis said.
‘I HOLD MY BREATH’
“Every day I hold my breath, wondering how many fraudulent claim letters are going to be in our mail,” Heiple said. “It’s so time-consuming to open all of these envelopes.” Earlier this week it took three people approximately 45 minutes each, she said. “It’s overwhelming.”
It has cost the OESC – the taxpayers – 41 cents to mail each of those notification letters, so the postage bill for the letters sent to Food and Shelter for Friends has been at least $146, Heiple noted. And that doesn’t include the cost of the envelopes nor the expense of stuffing them with those letters.
A box of 500 letter-size #10 envelopes with a cellophane window that displays the recipient’s address retails for approximately $25 to $30.
Apparently at least part of OESC’s problem is that the agency is using an antiquated 40-year-old computer.
Additionally, the volume of claims filed with the OESC for unemployment benefits has been unprecedented: more than half a million, the interim executive director of the agency announced on June 4.
The OESC received a record 60,534 claims for unemployment benefits in one week in early April. In comparison, the previous one-week record was 9,778 initial unemployment claims filed one week in January 1991, OESC records extending back to 1987 reflect.