Washington state taps National Guard for jobless aid backlog

SEATTLE (AP) — The state of Washington is calling in the National Guard to help process unemployment benefit claims as officials grapple with a backlog caused in part by a fraud ring that stole more than half a billion dollars in aid, officials said Thursday.

Washington state's Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine said that Gov. Jay Inslee approved the deployment of troops who will start assisting her team next week as it tries to reduce the unemployment claim backlog.

Details about the number of National Guard soldiers, their precise tasks and the length of their assistance are still being finalized but they will for the most part perform desk jobs.

The troops will be trained to resolve identity verification issues that have come to the forefront since the state announced in May that it paid out between $550 million to $650 million through tens of thousands of fraudulent claims. LeVine said Thursday that the state has since recovered $337 million.

The payouts happened as Washington and other states rushed to help people hurt by the economic fallout from the pandemic. Officials have blamed the fraud on international criminal organizations using identities stolen in previous large-scale data breaches.

A West African fraud ring using identities stolen in prior data breaches, such as the massive 2017 Equifax breach, is believed to be behind the fraud, which targeted nearly a dozen states, according to California cybersecurity firm Agari.

After the discovery, the Washington state Employment Security Department responded by suspending some unemployment benefit payments to get a handle on the situation. More than 1.1 million people have filed claims for unemployment since early March when the pandemic job losses began, and 844,000 people who filed...