Rockford Sun

State Sen. Dave Syverson (R-Rockford) in his legislative update for the week of Dec. 6-10 touched on the issue of identity theft and how it’s adversely impacting Illinois.

Syverson cited a recent WalletHub study that shows the Prairie State to have experienced more identity theft per capita than any other state this year.

The analysis ranked Illinois the sixth most vulnerable state in terms of identity theft and fraud.

All 50 states were evaluated by 14 metrics, including, but not limited to, average loss amounts, fraud arrest rates and data disposal laws.

“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Illinois has experienced unprecedented issues related to its unemployment system, including the botched attempt to update the Illinois Department of Employment Security’s (IDES) outdated computer system that exposed the Social Security numbers and personal information of nearly 32,500 claimants,” Syverson’s update said. “While IDES has not yet released full figures on the impact of unemployment fraud since the beginning of the pandemic, an audit of just the first seven weeks of the federal government’s unemployment pandemic-related programs revealed that IDES gave more than $155 million to fraudulent claims.”

Fraudsters bilked more than $14.8 million from the Illinois Department of Employment Security during the pandemic, with experts having warned total losses to reach $1 billion, an IDES report revealed, according to the libertarian nonprofit think tank Illinois Policy.

According to an unidentified IDES spokesperson, the report covered unemployment claims believed to have been collected by residents who were actually working.

“This does not include any number associated with identity theft-related unemployment fraud,” she told Illinois Policy.

A month after the IDES loss report was published, Syverson spoke out about the matter.

The Rockford Sun reported that the senator attributed the fraud to the measures Springfield took to curb COVID-19.

"When the governor and state health people chose to shut down thousands of businesses, putting tens of thousands of people into unemployment, we knew there was going to be a problem,” Syverson said in a video posted to Facebook, the publication reported. “At the same time, the governor chose to close all of the unemployment offices and we warned back then that this was going to be a disaster for laid-off workers trying to get help and trying to get benefits. The results of this audit do not surprise me."