The Odessa Record - Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!

Three years after crooks stole billions in unemployment insurance funds, federal and state officials are scrambling to retrieve the money which was directed to the jobless and plug leaks in their systems.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, the General Accounting Office estimates taxpayers underwrote $60 billion in fraudulent payments from an “unprecedented infusion of federal Covid-19 relief funds into UI programs during the pandemic.” It gave villains and organized crime groups high-value targets to exploit.

Of that vast sum, our Employment Security Department (ESD) r...