Spousal Unemployment Fraud

[bt7711]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NY

Hi =)
I have a question. I have a friend who use to be an owner/operator trucker (truly its a friend..lol) that is currently married. His wife embezzled over 25k of the business monies, she endorsed fake checks and now has claimed unemployment benefits under her husbands name, who was working at the time. She has since gone to jail for check forgery and other items. My question is: my friends truck is inoperable, so he went to claim unemployment benefits from a previous employer, apparently there is a window of time to do this. While doing this, he found out from the unemployment ins. office that he had received between 2500-5000 (can't remember) of payouts. He said he NEVER signed up for unemployment because he was working, until 'now'. Long story short - he confronted his wife (in jail) and she confessed she 'stole' unemployment benefits under his name. In the mean time he is NOT able to receive any benefits, until he pays back some amount of money to the unemployment office. And of course he can't do this because he is not working. What ramifications does (or will if any) he has against his wife, trying to clear his name AND be able to collect benefits in the future should he ever become unemployed again?
Can you advise, please?
Thanks,
bt7711

 

[commentator]

The way unemployment law looks at this, he should have protected his information from his wife. He is himself responsible for misuse of his social security number and his unemployment eligibility. This little stint of her receiving benefits apparently happened at some time during the past not very recently. Did he not notice this money showing up on their federal income taxes? The overpayment will stay on his unemployment record forever, incidentally, as long as he signs up for benefits, this overpayment will be there until it is taken care of, even five or six years from now.

It was a pretty stupid thing of him to give her total access to all his personal papers, his mail, his income taxes, all personal finance information and not keep at least eyeball access to it himself.

And she must have represented herself as the employer, too and given him a clean lack of work lay off, since she somehow managed to pull this unemployment claim off without his ever having to appear in person (or stopped drawing when "he" was required to appear in person) AND he is still married to this woman, even now. Is a divorce in progress?

He can insist till the cows come home, but it is going to be tough for him to convince the overpayment unit that this fraudulent drawing was done without his full knowledge and that he did not profit from it in any way. Did they have joint checking? Did the money go into his checking account or hers? He's going on the hook for this unemployment overpayment before he can draw any more unemployment right now.

But he should talk to the overpayment unit of unemployment in his state, discuss with them the circumstances, and try to ask them to prosecute his (soon to be ex we hope)wife for fraud. Otherwise, his only alternative is to sign up for unemployment benefits now, file for the benefits each week he is eligible and let them take the weekly checks until he's paid back this money.

 

[davew128]

The way unemployment law looks at this, he should have protected his information from his wife. He is himself responsible for misuse of his social security number and his unemployment eligibility. This little stint of her receiving benefits apparently happened at some time during the past not very recently. Did he not notice this money showing up on their federal income taxes? .....

It was a pretty stupid thing of him to give her total access to all his personal papers, his mail, his income taxes, all personal finance information and not keep at least eyeball access to it himself.

I will disagree with you in some aspects of this.

It is NOT reasonable to expect one spouse to not know the social security number and date of birth of the other spouse. In order to file a federal tax return (jointly or separately) both spouse's SSN's are REQUIRED. Even with a joint return, who's to say the wife didn't spot the 1099-G and trash it and not report the income? I agree at some point husband MAY find out when the IRS questions it not being reported, or even if it was reported, there is what a professional would consider reasonable and the reality of what most people do and that is just sign the return.

I would also question about appearing in person (I don't know specifically about NY) as many states allow for the filing for UI benefits over the web and there is no phone or personal contact.

 

[commentator]

If unmployment was paid and a person did not report it on his federal income taxes that year, the two systems would cross match,and this would be noticed very quickly. That's why everyone who gets unemployment can't just forget to mention it on their income tax. Then there would be a lot of correspondence about it, which I suppose if you were just letting the other person handle all your business, they could hide from you.

But as I said, it is going to be tough in a marriage situation to say you had no idea your spouse was doing what they were doing. I agree, it's very ordinary for a person to know their spouse's ss# and personal information. But in order to sign him up for his unemployment, she had to be really controlling their personal accounts, paperwork, tax records, and as I said, he wasn't doing even a cursory glance at his own business? That is almost unbelievably negligent.

As I said, for her to actually do the signing up for unemployment without his knowledge and providing the department with the necessary documentation would be complicated, but is remotely possible. Even the on line and telephone systems do require the person to register for work in person and many times to do job seeking activities after they have draw for a few weeks. This would be almost impossible to do for someone else.

In careful reading of his post it sounds as though this man might have been working for another employer, then left that employment for some qualifying reason, then became a self employed truck driver. If he himself filed that original claim from the old employer, then he himself was supposed to protect his PIN number for accessing his claim and filing for weeks of benefits even from his spouse[/U

The situation of the spouse or family member of a claimant continuing to file for benefits after the claimant has returned to work is quite common. In these cases, the claimant was usually lazy enough to allow the family member to do the certifications each week or to do his whole claim for him. Then when he has an overpayment and he says he had no knowledge of her filing after he went back to work, he's told he was not supposed to have her involved in his claim in the first place.