WASHINGTON — Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is demanding a federal watchdog audit how many government workers are accepting “fraudulent unemployment benefits” while still collecting paychecks after discovering a handful of “rip-off artists” bilked taxpayers out of nearly half a million dollars.
In a Thursday letter to Labor Department Acting Deputy Inspector General Michael C. Mikulka, obtained by The Post, Ernst tallied up more than $405,000 taken in by just five federal employees “double-dipping” on the taxpayer dole.
One worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Health Administration and the IRS took more than $130,000 in unemployment benefits over six years on the job — and was even promoted several times.
One US Postal Service employee nabbed more than $109,000 in unemployment as part of a scheme across eight states that started in 2020.
Another USPS employee was convicted in Boston federal court in November 2023 of embezzling more than $90,000 and fraudulently obtaining unemployment benefits.
A Department of Labor worker also picked up an additional $46,000 in jobless benefits for around a year and a half while still on the federal payroll.
And an employee working full-time at the Social Security Administration cashed more than $30,000 in unemployment benefits between 2020 and 2021.
“Thousands of bureaucrats are ripping off taxpayers in plain sight, not even bothering to wear a disguise,” said the Iowa Republican, who also chairs the Senate’s DOGE caucus, in a statement. “If it weren’t for those darn whiz kids at DOGE, they might have gotten away with it.”
“I am rooting out the rip-off con artists and putting an end to the inside jobs by making it impossible to pocket a government paycheck and unemployment benefits at the same time,” Ernst added.
“Since both lists are maintained by government, this should be a rather easy fix.”
Since at least former President Jimmy Carter’s administration, government watchdogs have been able to detect hundreds of federal employees defrauding taxpayers for jobless benefits.
A 2022 audit by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found that the agency’s workforce was having their identities used for more than $2.6 million paid out in unemployment benefits while also collecting overtime pay.
Ernst demanded a probe of the ill-gotten gains by the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee in January 2023 — but said in her letter to the DOL IG “[a]s far as I know, no action was ever taken to address the issue.”
“It now makes sense why there was so much protesting from bureaucrats about granting DOGE access to federal databases to try to detect fraud!” she added, referencing opposition to the Elon Musk-led effort to root out fraud at the Treasury.
DOL’s Employment and Training Administration has allocated at least $562 million for the detection of unemployment insurance fraud.
Not all government employees are cashing the unemployment checks though, with several instances of civil servants having their identities stolen by scammers.
In 2021, fraudsters used Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s name to try to obtain welfare checks.
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