My mom called me today with news that (without getting into specifics of how she discovered this so not to dox ourselves) she found out someone has been using her former name to collect 60% of her salary of unemployment since the beginning of the pandemic. She has been paying taxes on this for the past 2.5 years.
She has not had to use unemployment since the late 80s, but she logged into the unemployment insurance website of our state to try and log in. She knew something was off when one of the verification questions (in addition to her social security number which has also been compromised, obvs.) asked her for the first 8 letters of her pet’s name. We’ve never had a pet with that many letters in their name.
She works in a medical laboratory and never stopped working during the pandemic for obvious reasons, aside from when my dad passed and she took off a couple weeks in the beginning of Jan 2021. Her employer is based in an east coast state, we’re in the Midwest (just to give you an idea of how far removed they are).
Whoever applied under my mom’s name had to get verification from corporate. They approved unemployment benefits as the employer for someone who is not their employee, who does not have that name, who does not have her address, and who did not stop working.
My mom has filed a police report and is going through the process of getting things sorted out. My question is, was this gross negligence on the part of her employer? If so what steps can we take? She is likely going to get a lawyer but endorsed me getting an opinion from this group. Does anyone have any advice as to whether or not this counts as litigious.
First time poster, longtime lurker. Any help is appreciated.