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Many of the details remain unclear, but at least six Portland lawyers' personal information was used to file apparently fraudulent claims for unemployment insurance with the Oregon Employment Department.
"I got a notice in the mail in December that my application for unemployment had been turned down," says Beth Creighton, a Portland plaintiff's attorney. "I had read a lot about how screwed up the system was, so I assumed it was the system being screwed up rather than something nefarious."
Jody Stahancyk, a Portland divorce lawyer, had a similar experience. She says that earlier this year, her firm was notified that she had apparently applied for unemployment and that a check was being mailed to Southern Oregon.
Stahancyk says she never applied and that she's never had an address in Southern Oregon. Whoever did apply in her name had Stahancyk's Social Security number, however.
Stahancyk says she spent considerable time trapped in the Employment Department's phone system before reaching a clerk, who declined to tell her the address to which the check had been mailed. Stahancyk says she urged the OED to alert Oregonians that there may be widespread fraud taking place. But she left her interactions with the agency highly dissatisfied.
When she told her accountant what had happened, her accountant told Stahancyk a similar tale: The accountant had gotten unemployment checks in her mailbox addressed to her daughter, who was fully employed and did not live with her mother. (The accountant's daughter is not a lawyer.)
In other words, it appears someone succeeded in convincing the Employment Department to send checks made out to a recipient who was still employed, without the recipient's knowledge.
"It's way worse than anybody thinks," Stahancyk says.
Earlier in the pandemic, the Washington Employment Security Division reported it had been defrauded out of more than $600 million.
It is unclear how widespread the attempted fraud is in Oregon.
Sean Riddell, another Portland lawyer, says he recently received a letter telling him his application for benefits—which he knew nothing about—had been denied.
Dennis Westlind, the managing partner at Bullard Law, a downtown Portland firm, says three lawyers at his firm reported that somebody had fraudulently filed unemployment claims in their names. Westlind has a regular meeting with the managing partners at other law firms, and he raised the issue at a recent meeting.
"I got a flood of responses that others said, 'Yeah, that happened to us too,'" Westlind says. "It all seems to have happened in the past month." Westlind says the Bullard firm notified the Employment Department but did not get any information back about the scope of the problem.
WW described the lawyers' complaints to the agency and asked for information.
Patty Jo Angelini, a spokesperson for the agency, said it was "working hard to prevent and stop fraud where we can" but declined in a statement to provide any answers.
"We are not going to share information about fraudulent activity, including what we are doing to prevent it," Angelini said. "Doing so would inform those who are committing the fraud.
"Even sharing estimated amounts of fraudulent benefits paid, or recovered, informs fraudsters about whether or not their schemes are working, and where to put their energy. We are not going to help criminals refine their craft."
She added that withholding information serves the public's interest.
"We are accountable to protect the public Trust Fund dollars," she said. "While we truly value transparency, and sharing how we are working to help Oregonians, we will not share information that puts the Trust Fund money at risk—that is money that employers have trusted us with, to provide to Oregonians in need. We do not want anyone to take from those who need and deserve these crucial benefits, nor from the employers who fund them."
The Employment Department has form for people whose identities may have been stolen, which can be found here; and a fraud hotline at 1-877-668-3204.