01/27/2022

What Organizations Need to Know About Unemployment Identity Theft

It's important to inform employees of certain rules, too

When Liz Leith, director of finance and administration at the Online News Association, returned from ONA’s Insights conference last October, she wanted to rest and enjoy her weekend. However, she had a weird piece of mail waiting for her: a “letter of determination” from the Washington, DC, Department of Employment Services (DOES) saying her unemployment benefits had been approved. But Leith hadn’t applied for benefits. She was still employed.

Lucky for Leith, because of her role at ONA, she had access to the organization’s DC DOES account. When she logged on, she saw nothing amiss. Then, she decided to do some sleuthing. Leith had never set up a personal DC DOES account, but she acted as if she did and plugged in her social security number and selected “forgot password.” The site told her it would resend her password to an AOL email address. However, it wasn’t an email address that belonged to Leith.

Leith used an online form to report the fraud, and over the next weeks made several calls, spending hours on hold to ensure DOES understood this was fraud. It wasn’t until December that Leith got written confirmation the department considered it fraud and no benefits would be paid. It was also in December that Leith received the letter DOES sent to ONA’s office asking the organization to confirm she was unemployed.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.