State won’t comment on unemployment fraud investigation

No one at the State Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation is talking, but multiple sources have confirmed an ongoing investigation into unemployment insurance fraud involving illegal immigrants and bogus Social Security cards.

Department spokesperson Mae Worthy denied any investigation involved a government insider assisting in processing the fraudulent claims. She declined to comment other than to say, “There’s always some type of fraud going on. We have a number of fraud cases always in the works.”

Of course that’s true. But not all its investigations involve what informed sources say is fraud that could amount to millions.

Integrity Programs Manager Steve Zuelke also declined comment.

Here’s what he had to say in October 2006 four months after he accepted the position.

Zuelke: “… (T)he difficulty that we encounter as a program, if I had another six full-time employees working on nothing but identity theft and fraud circumstances, I believe I could keep them busy. The level is out there. The programs that we have in place identify a large percentage of individuals who fail to report earnings when they are working, individuals who have questionable identities. The reality of the circumstance is that we have better technology than we have staff to really investigate that technology discovers."