Attorney General: $9.3M in stolen unemployment money recovered for Washington state

OLYMPIA — Attorney General Bob Ferguson recently announced that his office recovered another $9.3 million stolen as part of a massive fraud perpetrated against states across the country. 

The money had been deposited by fraudsters into Bank of America accounts, and last week a King County Superior Court judge ordered Bank of America to return the stolen funds to Washington state.

Ferguson’s Complex Litigation Division has now used forfeiture laws to recover $33.7 million stolen from the Employment Security Department. Essentially, the Attorney General is recovering stolen money sitting in accounts at banks and other institutions such as PayPal. 

While multiple states suffered substantial losses, Attorney General Ferguson remains the only state attorney general to exercise state asset forfeiture powers to recover these taxpayer dollars.

During the pandemic, sophisticated fraud rings used identity data harvested from data breaches to steal tens of billions of dollars from at least 11 states, including Washington.

Attorney General Ferguson initiated a unique investigation searching for bank accounts where fraudsters had not yet withdrawn all stolen funds, and launched a legal effort to reclaim these funds for the state. 

To date, financial institutions across the country have cooperated with the Attorney General’s investigation. The Attorney General’s Office anticipates additional recoveries from other financial institutions in the months ahead. The recovered resources go back to the state and federal unemployment systems.

“Our initiative is delivering results for taxpayers,” Ferguson said. “Fraudsters parked this money in accounts with banks and financial institutions all over the country. We’re going directly to those institutions to get it back. We are not slowing down.”

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