Fraudulent unemployment insurance payouts during the pandemic amounted to $100 billion to $135 billion, according to an estimate from the Government Accountability Office included in a report released on Tuesday.
The congressional watchdog produced the estimate based on sampling of pandemic unemployment insurance payouts and the use of a statistical model that took fraud risks into account. According to the report, as of May 1, just $1.2 billion in fraudulent overpayments have been recovered by states.
