PORTLAND, Oregon — We first met Amy Anderson in December of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. The Portland woman didn’t know what to do after unemployment checks started showing up in her mailbox. Dozens of them. Each letter listed her home address with somebody else’s name.
“They’re coming in every day, almost two or three at a time,” Anderson told KGW in 2020.
At the time, the Oregon Employment Department — which doles out unemployment benefits — warned anyone who received the suspicious letters to file a fraud report, then return the envelopes by clearly writing "Fraudulent" on them. Amy followed the state’s directions and sent the letters back.
“I figured that was the end of it,” said Anderson.
It wasn’t.
In July, she received some more letters addressed to the same people at her home address.
“I don’t know any of these people. I don’t even know how they got my address,” said Anderson.
One of the letters was from the Oregon Employment Department, looking to collect overpayments from the Unemployment Insurance Program. The other letter was from U.S. Bank. It explained that benefits added to a debit card hadn’t been used. Due to inactivity, the money ranging from $135 on one card to $673 on another was about to be turned over to the state as unclaimed property.
During the pandemic, the government expanded unemployment benefits to help those who lost their jobs. At the same time, the FBI reported a spike in fraudulent unemployment claims using stolen identities nationwide.
In Oregon, the state’s unemployment department paid out more than $24 million dollars in fraudulent claims in 2020, the first 10 months of the pandemic.
“I do understand that COVID put us all in a dilemma that we couldn’t do a lot while we were all on lockdown,” said Anderson. “But there’s been three years.”
Anderson said she warned the state about the fraud and sent the letters back — clearly marked as fraud. Yet, the state continued to send her letters, and the money is still just sitting on a debit card. It’s never been recovered.
“I was assured it would be taken care of in 2020,” said Anderson.
The Oregon Employment Department issued a written statement explaining, “Some collection letters tied to pandemic-era fraudulent claims were sent out in error – we believe this to have been a small number of letters.”
A spokesperson said the agency has not found any instances where benefit payments were sent out after the claim was flagged for fraud. The agency couldn’t explain why fraudulent benefits are still sitting with U.S Bank, except to say it pursues collection of fraudulently paid benefits.
Anderson feels it’s important for the money to be recovered, because when someone loses their job, they need help and rely on a system that works.
“The fact I got more mail four years later, with my address and their name, makes me really concerned,” said Anderson.