The monumental pilfering of public dollars has left Washington as the largest known victim of the fraud that also has hit at least six other states, according to a May 14 U. Secret Service bulletin. The federal Department of Justice is investigating. It also may have political recriminations: Republicans are already citing the losses to slam Gov. But the biggest victims may be the innumerable Washingtonians who now have had their legitimate and urgently needed claims for jobless benefits delayed as the state tries belatedly to halt the fraud.
Like many workers, Muhammad said she has struggled to get answers from the state ESD, which has been overwhelmed with fraud reports. Without the benefits, Muhammad said she and her husband are struggling to pay basic expenses, including rent.
I mean, like, really? To some degree, Washington and its workers are the latest casualties in an era of rising identity theft. Filing for unemployment insurance in Washington and many states requires the sort of personal information — Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses — that is depressingly easy to steal or buy on the dark web, thanks to massive data breaches such as the attack on credit reporting agency Equifax that allowed access to records of more than million individuals.
The net result, it now seems, was an unemployment system that was easier for legitimate users — but also for bad actors, who, once inside, could both file bogus claims and set preferences for how they wanted to be contacted and paid. But starting in March, as the coronavirus response shut down the economy, those numbers skyrocketed to a peak of , initial claims in a single week. By late April, the state had taken in around , initial claims, paralyzing its website and call center. At the same time, across the nation, federal and state officials pushed to expedite benefits payments, even if it meant losing some security.
It was a situation ripe for exploitation. And, according to security experts, actors like Scattered Canary did just that. Scattered Canary began as a one-man shop running Craigslist scams , but has grown over more than a decade into a criminal syndicate targeting businesses, governments, as well as individuals with a variety of cons, according to Agari, the California cybersecurity company that first discovered and named the organization in early Some slice of fraud may also be coming from domestic sources, and there are always the run-of-the-mill efforts by individuals to game the system.
Najarian said Scattered Canary appears to use some software automation tools, but it mainly employs dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of individuals who tap out their schemes on computer keyboards. Marcus Fowler, director of strategic threat at Darktrace, a cybersecurity firm, said the fraud scenario reported by Agari is feasible, but identifying specific actors in cyber fraud can be extremely difficult.
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