Illinois Valley Times

At a town hall in Dixon, state Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) expressed concern over rising reports of unemployment fraud.

"This continued lack of accountability from the administration on unemployment financials is completely unacceptable," Rezin tweeted. 

Republicans said a full accounting of all the fraud there’s been “cannot be calculated because IDES has not made any figures available or submitted this annual report,” according to The Center Square.

“It is tremendously unfair to  penalize Illinois businesses for fraud perpetrated by criminals and  ineptness from the administration in dealing with the fraud,” Rezin said. 

Rezin continued her discussion of the unemployment fraud issue in a thread of tweets.

"While our employers are struggling to recover from a national economic crisis and there is mounting concern that unemployment insurance taxes will be raised to compensate for the loss and mismanagement, the agency is unwilling to even provide a basic financial report," Rezin said. 

The Illinois Department of Employment Security is almost one month past the deadline in filing a report on the unemployment trust fund in Illinois, the Center Square reported. Republicans in the legislature are charging that they have not filed the necessary financial data.  It is unclear how many fraudulent claims have been paid. IDES said that it stopped 1.7 million fraudulent claims. But they did not comment on how many fraudulent claims have been paid by the state. 

Despite this, a report from the Auditor General demonstrated that Illinois paid $97 million over the minimum in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, including $41 million to claimants whose identities were not verified and $343,000 to 35 deceased claimants. Illinois's unemployment trust fund is $5 billion in debt according to the Center Square, while the state was ranked as the least tax-friendly state in the United States by Kiplinger.