By Marcy Axness, TME

Over a billion dollars has been stolen in plain sight by inmates housed across all 35 prisons of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), according to state law enforcement officials last week.

“This is the largest taxpayer fraud that has occurred in California history,” said Vern Pierson, El Dorado County D.A. and president of the California District Attorneys Association, at a November 24 press conference in Sacramento.

Officials reported that a scheme of fraudulent unemployment applications to California’s Employment Development Department (EDD) spread quickly among inmates throughout California’s jails and prisons, beginning in March. The con was hatched after the federal government instituted the…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

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‘I have never seen fraud of this magnitude.’
–Cynthia Zimmer, Kern County district attorney, at an online press conference November 24

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance in the federal CARES Act opened up benefits to those not usually eligible for unemployment benefits, and inadvertently opened up California’s coffers to massive fraudulent theft from California taxpayers.

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This is part of the December 4, 2020 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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