Given the national emergency in which they were operating, where they’ve got backlogs of claims and all these people still waiting to be paid, and then they’re dealing with this huge wave of fraud, this didn’t feel like the time to be going on a big FOIA fishing expedition. One of the things you have to be mindful of is the workload for staff at these agencies. And that data was covered under public records. For example, with the Office of the Inspector General in Washington, D.C., I had learned from my reporting that the number of full-time investigators they had on staff had been decreasing for many years and I wanted data that would show that timeline. I did file some public records requests, but I was very strategic about it, so instead of making broad blanket requests, I focused on asking specific questions. So I knew right away that it would be a waste of time to try and fight that fight. They are considered private information because they involve things like Social Security numbers, so public records acts don’t apply. Podkul : For this story, there actually weren’t that many because I realized early on in my reporting that unemployment insurance claims are not public records. I imagine you had a lot of public records requests. One thing that helps is the strength of ProPublica’s pitching, vetting, and editing process, which is very efficient, and helps because you get feedback all along every step of the way so you can see what may be missing, and that enables you to be very efficient in your work. My general approach is to try and have everything progressing simultaneously. So at the same time I was filing records requests I was interviewing and looking for potential victims to profile and trying to gather as much data as possible and collect it all at the same time while doing analysis and setting up additional interviews. The way it all came together is, I like to follow a multi-thread process. Podkul : That conversation happened in spring, probably around May, and then all in, it took about two months to do this story - which was pretty quick. How long did the research and reporting process take? There had already been local stories written about it, but it seemed like the time was right to do a bigger piece that would dig deeper and give people the big picture of everything that has happened with this issue over the past year. It just seemed really interesting because I’ve been seeing all of these reports of pandemic-related fraud, like with the Paycheck Protection Program. I had just finished another project for ProPublica in April and then my editor mentioned this as a possibility and asked if I’d be interested in looking into this further. Podkul : It’s one of those issues where everyone seems to know someone who either had their identity stolen and had a fake unemployment insurance claim in their name or knows someone who has a friend who did. Seems like I’m seeing reports in my local media about fraudulent unemployment claims several times a week at this point. The interview has been edited for concision and clarity. We talked to Podkul, who specializes in data-driven stories, about his process for compiling and analyzing large volumes of information - and got his tips for other reporters who may be contemplating similar projects. history: “Depending on who you ask, it was tens of billions and perhaps hundreds of billions, paid out in improper payments, including due to fraud.” It was, Podkul says, possibly one of the biggest fraud waves in U.S. In “ How Unemployment Insurance Fraud Exploded During the Pandemic ,” ProPublica reporter Cezary Podkul reveals the conditions that allowed scammers to commit fraud by filing huge volumes of bogus unemployment insurance claims and delves into the marketplaces operating online in plain site where criminals would buy and sell victims’ personal information. Even top government officials and lawmakers aren’t immune - fraudulent claims were opened by scammers in the name of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and U.S. Each of these phony claims represents a potential victim of identity theft, whose Social Security number and other private information was used by a scammer to attempt to commit fraud - often successfully. In June, Maryland officials said they had identified more than 500,000 potentially fraudulent claims in just the previous six-week period alone, and roughly 1.3 million since the pandemic began. Almost immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic began, labor department officials in states nationwide noticed an alarming increase in fraudulent unemployment claims involving identity theft - a trend that really skyrocketed once federal and state programs for enhanced unemployment benefits started going into effect.
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