CALIFORNIA has paid out unemployment benefits to about 20,000 inmates including murderer Scott Peterson in what investigators are calling “the most significant fraud on taxpayer funds” in the state’s history.
Death row and other inmates across the state’s 38 prisons together received more than $140million in coronavirus jobless benefits from March to August, The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.
“The murderers and rapists and human traffickers should not be getting this money. It needs to stop,” said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who leads a task force looking into the fraud.
California’s Employment Development Department made payments to claimants including Peterson, who was convicted in 2002 in the murder of his pregnant wife and their unborn son, according to a letter that prosecutors sent to Governor Gavin Newsom.
Death row inmate Cary Stayner, a convicted serial killer who murdered four women near Yosemite National Park, also received benefits.
Unemployment benefits also went to Isauro Aguirre, who forced 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez to eat cat feces and his own vomit before beating him to death.
It was not immediately known if the inmates claimed the benefits on their own or if other people filed the claims on their behalf.
Claims by inmates totaled 35,000, with $19,676 sent to one death row inmate and $48,600 sent to another inmate whose identity was not revealed.
There were at least 158 claims from 133 death row inmates and $400,000 was issued to them.
Nine prosecutors urged Newsom to provide “significant resources” to counties that are not equipped to probe the large-scale fraud.
Newsom said that the “unemployment fraud across local jails and state and federal prisons is absolutely unacceptable.”
The governor said he directed the department to review its systems and act immediately to prevent fraud and hold the culprits accountable.
Meanwhile, some prosecutors estimate that the payments that should not have gone to inmates could amount to as much as $1billion.
The fraud mostly stemmed from inmates’ family or friends filing paperwork and receiving debit cards by mail, then depositing the money into their prison accounts, Riverside Distirict Attorney Mike Hestrin told The Times.
In some instances, the inmates themselves have claimed benefits or have done so with the help of gangs.
State law requires that unemployment claimants actively hunt for jobs in order to receive benefits payments.
