The District’s inspector general is warning that flawed verification processes at the D.C. Department of Employment Services may be allowing the city to pay unemployment benefits to ineligible residents.
“[The department] lacks an adequate quality assurance mechanism to ensure that all required verifications, whether done manually or by automation, are conducted and all results are recorded prior to issuing initial unemployment benefits,” Inspector General Charles Willoughby wrote in a report released this month. “Because of these deficiencies, ineligible claimants may be receiving unemployment benefits.”
Although investigators said the agency was sufficiently verifying some information, such as an applicant’s monetary eligibility, the inspector general said that the department has “significant deficiencies” in its process to review why applicants are unemployed.
Willoughby also wrote that the agency did not document the immigration statuses of applicants or “adequately” conduct checks to make sure applicants weren’t receiving benefits from other states.
