COLUMBUS, Ohio — After an increase in reported fraudulent attempts to access Ohio Department of Job and Family Services unemployment benefits, an ODJFS spokesperson confirmed they've identified the issue and fixed it.
The focus now is on the flood of incoming phone calls from people locked out of their accounts.
ODJFS said people who are locked out of their accounts need to call them to fix the issue.
Columbus resident Brent Griess said he keeps trying and can't get through.
"It's frustrating,” Griess said.
In one phone call attempt, he was disconnected after nearly four hours of waiting.
“I don't know why there's such an enormous issue with this,” he said. “Something definitely needs to be done.”
Last week, ODJFS reported an increase in fraudulent attempts to access the system.
Now more than a week later, phone calls are still flooding the system and people like Griess are trying to regain access after getting locked out of their accounts.
“There’s no person I can get a hold of,” he said.
According to the latest data released Thursday by ODJFS, 22,422 initial unemployment claims were filed from July 9 to July 15. Roughly 10,345 of those have been flagged for potential fraud. That's more than 46% of the claims filed in that time.
In Ohio since the start of the pandemic, there has been $177 million in unemployment insurance fraud and $883 million in non-fraud overpayments. With the state's pandemic unemployment assistance, there has been $1 billion in fraud.
Griess said he'll keep trying. He's now three weeks behind on his unemployment payments.
“I don't know, at what point this ends, I keep waiting for it to die down," he said.
When it comes to the long-term, ODJFS said in part, "we are always looking at the nature of ongoing fraud attempts to help better identify and react quickly to them, and also to determine how best to minimize the impact of our anti-fraud measures on legitimate claimants. We'll use learnings from this to help us do that in the future."