The District has fired 61 employees for deliberately collecting unemployment insurance while still on the job, which cost the city at least $800,000. And more firings could follow, according to an administration spokesman.
“We will not tolerate malfeasance in the government,” Pedro Ribeiro, a spokesman for D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, said Tuesday. “If we find people defrauding the District government, we are going to go after them. End of story.”
The unemployment payouts to employees ranged from several hundred dollars to more than $20,000 per person since 2009, according to city officials.
The 61 people fired were among the 92 District employees who were suspended as the result of an internal investigation the Department of Employment Services announced in February. At that time, an additional 40 former employees were found to have been taking advantage of the District’s unemployment insurance system. Since then, city officials have found overpayments to about 100 more city workers.
The city reviews each case, including adhering to employees’ collective bargaining contract stipulations, and if the person is found to have “knowingly” committed fraud, that person is fired, Ribeiro said. There are some cases where the employee did not realize they had been collecting insurance, he said.
The city employs about 32,000 people.
The cases of those who are ultimately fired are turned over to the city Office of the Inspector General, which then refers the files to the Office of the Attorney General for civil prosecution. Attorney General Irvin Nathan said Wednesday he has so far received 30 cases in this scandal.
“My office is fully committed to recouping all monies it can from present and former city employees who illegally obtained unemployment compensation while working for the city government,” Nathan said. “We expect to begin filing these cases in the next few weeks.”
The inspector general is also referring cases to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for criminal prosecution.
The Employment Services Department caught the fraud when it began conducting quarterly cross-examinations with the National Directory for New Hires, a federal database, about a year ago to ensure new hires weren’t receiving unemployment checks.
Lisa Mallory, director of the Employment Services Department, said the department is working with the city’s chief financial officer to broaden the system to prevent payroll checks from going through to employees who haven’t canceled their unemployment insurance.
