Creative Scam
Washington State lost about $645M to unemployment scammers. The state has been busy trying to recover.
One scammer, who was arrested a couple of days ago, as he was trying to go back to Nigeria via JFK, is very creative.
He created a number of accounts, using gmail accounts. Each account had a variation of his email address, with dots (periods) in different places.
Google automatically removes the dots. The state's system treats each one as if it's unique, and does not check to make sure they're not sharing the same name, phone, address, etc.
So, wyle.e.coyotte@gmail.com and wylee.coyotte@gmail.com, go to the same gmail address: wyleecoyotte@gmail.com, but the state thinks it's two different people.
The state ended up sending tons of checks to the same address.
This guy scored something like $350K.
One scammer, who was arrested a couple of days ago, as he was trying to go back to Nigeria via JFK, is very creative.
He created a number of accounts, using gmail accounts. Each account had a variation of his email address, with dots (periods) in different places.
Google automatically removes the dots. The state's system treats each one as if it's unique, and does not check to make sure they're not sharing the same name, phone, address, etc.
So, wyle.e.coyotte@gmail.com and wylee.coyotte@gmail.com, go to the same gmail address: wyleecoyotte@gmail.com, but the state thinks it's two different people.
The state ended up sending tons of checks to the same address.
This guy scored something like $350K.
