Statewide, Iowa — A report from State Auditor Rob Sand shows about $240,000 worth of state unemployment checks were written to prisoners and dead people in the early months of the pandemic.
Iowa Workforce Development officials say the agency saw an unprecedented spike in unemployment claims between March and June of 2020 and had to process nearly five times as many claims as it normally did. Sand says hiring more staff to process those claims would have helped.
Sand’s review found the agency shifted investigators over to answering phones and helping Iowans file unemployment claims, and that led to a delay in cross-checking some death records. The review found that in the spring of 2020, Iowa Workforce Development issued unemployment benefits for six people who were dead.
Sand says the Iowa Workforce Development agency did not cross-check the Social Security numbers on unemployment claims with a list of prison inmates and wound up cutting unemployment checks for eight prisoners. Starting in February of 2021, the agency began doing those cross-checks monthly.
