Some recently unemployed Americans who have attempted to file for jobless benefits are encountering a nasty shock: They’ve been robbed by canaries.
Not the birds, of course, but a Nigerian hacker ring called “Scattered Canary” that has successfully lifted millions of dollars through scam unemployment filings in at least six states.
Washington state has been particularly hard hit, GIACT Co-founder and CEO Melissa Townsley-Solis told Karen Webster. The state’s top employment official said scammers made off with “orders of magnitude” above a previously reported $1.6 million, but that authorities “successfully prevented hundreds of millions of additional dollars from going out to these criminals.”
But Townsley-Solis said that’s just one scammer ring. Michigan as of last week had halted 340,000 questionable unemployment claims, while Pennsylvania suspects it has paid out on roughly 60,000 false filings, and Maryland has found 47,000 unemployment fake-outs.