Nigerian Scammers Getting U.S. Unemployment Checks
At FEE, Brad Polumbo writes about who's getting US pandemic relief -- at "almost ready to buy a Tesla" levels:
A Nigerian student named Mayowa spoke to USA Today and, on the condition of partial anonymity, openly admitted to scamming $50,000 from the US pandemic welfare system so far.All he had to do was make a list of real people and then search through available databases of hacked information for their Social Security numbers and birthdates.
"In most states that information is all it takes to file for unemployment," USA Today's Nick Penzenstadler says. "Even when state applications require additional verification, a little more money spent on sites such as FamilyTreeNow and TruthFinder provides answers - your mother's maiden name, where you were born, your high school mascot."
It doesn't always work, of course. But Mayowa told the newspaper his success rate is pretty high--about one success in every six claim attempts.
"Once we have that information, it's over," Mayowa told reporters. "It's easy money."
Government is to blame -- in a way private business would be unlikely to be:
It's certainly true that the COVID-19 pandemic and the sweeping big government response are unprecedented in our lifetimes. So, the runaway unemployment fraud and rampant fraud in other COVID relief programs are indeed an extreme example. But do not make the mistake of thinking that they are uncharacteristic of big-government programs by any stretch.As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained, bureaucracy, incompetence, and waste are inherent to government administration by its very nature.
In contrast, private businesses are driven to efficiency by the profit motive. A company-wide system that is broken and bleeding money is, in short order, fixed--or if it cannot be, that company will soon be driven out of business by more efficient competitors. This influences the behavior, not only of the business's owners, but of its hired managers, and thus all its employees.
I see this from volunteering in government (as a mediator doing free dispute resolution for LA residents) and getting to see some of the workings and people at City Hall, including those on the City Council and their staffers.
People are worried mainly about their advancement, and if a little money -- or truckloads and truckloads of it -- is wasted in the process, well, those are taxpayer dollars and unconnected to how they'll do in their career.
Maybe someone has a better solution for this, but we can complain that it's too easy to rip off our government through identity theft. But if the government ever implemented more security measures to protect themselves from paying out due to identity theft, we'd be screaming bloody murder than the government has invaded our privacy and demanding too much information from its citizens.
Patrick at January 4, 2021 11:30 PM
Seems to be government agencies should communicate better with each other.
Changing your name, for example, should not have to be done with every frickin' branch.
And the government should know your address, so if a check is being send somewhere else they should know it's not you.
NicoleK at January 5, 2021 4:45 AM
Nope on that Patrick. There are lots of ways to do this without requiring invasion of privacy. Instead people would be complaining about how so and so poor little person can't get what they are owed only because they are so incompetent they can't fill out paperwork or find a drivers a drivers license.
The PPP program had the same problem. Most of the money went to people who didn't need it, but were better connected politically.
Ben at January 5, 2021 5:59 AM
C'mon folks. If you can't trace the ID of every recipient, it is easier to scam the system. Not for a handful of dollars as the Nigerians are, but for millions.
Forget la femme. Cherchez l'argent.
Stop thinking like a bank robber and start thinking like a lawyer with a briefcase. A system distributing millions to people without requiring positive ID is wasting millions. Someone is scooping up those wasted millions, or gaining power by letting someone else do it.
"A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns." ~ Mario Puzo (The Godfather)
Conan the Grammarian at January 5, 2021 7:30 AM
Another perspective on someone getting rich from careless government spending.
"I saw some figures recently which said that if you took all the money spent on poverty in the United States and divided it by all the poverty families, you come up with a figure of $32,000/family. Now the average poverty family is apparently not getting the $32,000, and so clearly someone in between the treasury and those families is getting an awful lot of that money." ~ Thomas Sowell
Conan the Grammarian at January 5, 2021 8:18 AM
That Sowell statement above was from 1978. In today's dollars that's more than $131,000 per family. I'm pretty sure poor families are not getting that much today.
Conan the Grammarian at January 5, 2021 8:23 AM
And the government should know your address, so if a check is being send somewhere else they should know it's not you.
Oh, that's so cute. The IRS doesn't even blink an eye when thousands of refund checks go to the same freakin' address.
I R A Darth Aggie at January 5, 2021 9:04 AM
From March, 2018. But this may be intentional. Who wants an efficient tax collector?
"In the statement, IRS said IMF (Individual Master File) “is antiquated, with an architecture and design that dates back to the 1960s,” and admitted fewer programmers understand the old Assembly code. Auditors at the Government Accountability Office have said IRS has more than 20 million lines of Assembly code.
“The antiquated code is limiting and inflexible in today’s world of databases. "
Spiderfall at January 5, 2021 9:21 AM
I applaud the Nigerians for following the lead of American millionaires milking the system.
You go, Adefolake*, you go!
(*Nigerian name meaning 'your wealth supports us').
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at January 5, 2021 11:02 AM
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