This archive report was first published on 22 May 2020.
On May 21, 2020, the state of Washington was revealed to be the target of a massive Nigerian unemployment claims scam, which led to a surge in jobless claims and subsequent delays in benefits payments.
According to the state's monthly employment report for April, Washington's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 15.4%, up from 5.1% in March. This was higher than the national unemployment rate of 14.7% for April.
For the week ending May 16, the Employment Security Department (ESD) received 138,733 initial claims for unemployment insurance, a 26.8% increase over the prior week. This surge in claims made Washington the state with the highest percentage of its civilian labor force filing unemployment claims – at 30.8%, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation.
However, it now appears that many of these claims were fictitious and emanated from some computer in Nigeria. The disclosure came as the state was already struggling to process an unprecedented wave of legitimate jobless claims amid one of the worst economic crises in U.S. history.
Washington State Labor and Industries Secretary, LeVine, expressed his frustration with the situation, stating, "This makes me the most angry, and the most upset — that we need to delay payments to Washingtonians who need the benefits." He added that "we need to also build in more time for analysis. So going forward, we want to set expectations that we will add an additional one to two days to our processing time."
