A federal grant is expected to give a boost to Illinois’ investigation of waste, fraud, and abuse in the unemployment system.
“One of the new programs … is an inmate cross-match system, where we take a list of those collecting benefits, we run it against the list of those in prison, and we see if there’s a match and if those dollars are being paid improperly,” says Greg Rivara, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Employment Security. “We take a list of newly hired individuals, and we run that list against those individuals collecting benefits.”
The grant, from the U. S. Department of Labor, is $2.7 million.
Rivara says the department also listens to whistleblowers.
(Posted 10-6-2012 at 7am, Illinois Radio Network)