The Washington State Employment Security Department is a government agency for the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

that is tasked with management of the

unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for Work (human activity), w ...

system. It was established by the

Washington State Legislature The Washington State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a bicameral body, composed of the lower Washington House of Representatives, composed of 98 Representatives, and the upper Washington State Senat ...

in 1947, replacing an earlier system. The department has been led by commissioner Suzan G. LeVine, who was formerly U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, since 2018. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

in 2020, the state unemployment system was the target of an international

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...

scheme from

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

that cost over $650 million in losses. The system had processed claims for 30.8 percent of civilian workers in Washington, the highest of any state in the United States. The fraud ring, named Scattered Canary by security researchers, had also filed fraudulent unemployment claims in six other states and is under investigation from the

U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

. By early June, the state government had recovered $333 million out of the $650 million lost to the fraud scheme. The ESD had also implemented stricter reviews for unemployment claims that were later rolled back. In August, the ESD announced that benefits for 86,449 fraudulent accounts totaling $576 million had been paid out, of which $340 million had been recovered. The ESD's

trust fund A trust is a legal relationship in which the holder of a right gives it to another person or entity who must keep and use it solely for another's benefit. In the Anglo-American common law, the party who entrusts the right is known as the "settl ...

originally held $4.7 billion in March 2020, but was reduced to $2.8 billion within three months and is expected to be depleted by 2021.

References

External links

* {{Washington Employment Security Unemployment in the United States