Galesburg Reporter

The Illinois Department of Employment Security overpaid more than $5 billion in benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report released by the Office of the Auditor General Senator Neil Anderson issued a statement on July 26, responding to that audit and its findings.   

“This audit shows what we’ve feared all along, which is that Illinois taxpayers and businesses were being robbed by the Pritzker Administration’s incompetence. The disaster and dysfunction at IDES resulted in over $5 billion in wrongful payments—all while rightful beneficiaries waited months to receive owed unemployment benefits from Pritzker’s forced shutdowns. Now, it’s on the taxpayers to pay for the failures of their state government," said Sen. Anderson in his July 26 statement. 

Senator Neil Anderson has served the 47th District since 2015. The district now includes portions and or all of Adams, Fulton, Hancock, Henderson, Henry, Knox, Mason, McDonough, Menard, Mercer, Peoria, Rock Island, Schuyler, Stark, Tazwell, and Warren Counties. When he's not serving the residents of the 47th District as a legislator in Springfield, Anderson is a firefighter and paramedic in Moline.        

Of the $5.24 billion identified as overpayments, the Illinois Auditor General’s report finds that regular unemployment insurance accounted for $2.04 billion, and the pandemic unemployment assistance program accounted for $3.20 billion, although IDES did note that they had stopped or recovered payments of $150.36 million for regular unemployment insurance, and $361.34 million for the pandemic unemployment assistance program.

The report, published on July 26, is available here.

In early July, a new bill was signed into law that extends the time frame under which individuals who committed fraudulent activities during the COVID-19 pandemic can be prosecuted. 

The bill was first filed on Feb. 17, 2023, by Rep. Fred Crespo, and moved to the Senate on March 23. It was signed by Gov. J. B. Pritzker on June 30.

On July 28, KHQA reported that $2.8 billion of the total $5.24 billion cannot be recovered, because has been identified as paid out through identity theft and the perpetrators cannot be held responsible.

Prisoners and dead people received nearly $50 million, according to a report from 25 News Now. The outlet also noted that the auditor said a plan should have been in place to account for issues like a recession. 

The large volume of claims between 2020 and 2022 caused IDES to stop performing identity cross-matches that could have identified and prevented some of this fraud, and that systems created by the U.S. Department of Labor were not used by IDES.