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How Kansas Was Defrauded Of Nearly $600 Million in 2020

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Crysta Henthorne
/
Kansas News Service
Unemployment claims in Kansas skyrocketed in March of 2020 as the pandemic was beginning to spread throughout the United States.

An audit from the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit points to fake unemployment compensation claims.

The Kansas Department of Labor was not equipped to deal with the number of bogus unemployment compensation applications that occurred last year. The system primarily detects fraud manually instead of through automated means. That, coupled with an easy-to-crack federal assistance program, led to the overpayments.

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