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More than five billion dollars has been given out to Oklahomans in need of unemployment benefits since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Reports are now showing that nearly 20 percent of these claims were fraudulent. That would estimate to roughly one billion dollars in fraudulent payments.

Executive Director for the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, Shelley Zumwalt had this to say:

“Any system that is 41 years old is going to have problems and that’s where the cracks are going to come in when you have that type of volume going through something that’s used to processing thousands, not hundreds of thousands or millions.”

At the moment, the OESC says it is hard to determine where these fraudulent claims came from, but they are working to recover the funds.