The past year has been a financial disaster for thousands of families across the Miami Valley dating back to early in the health emergency.
Those families still can’t get the money the state owes them.
“We live paycheck to paycheck,” said Sheryl Lankford from Pleasant Hill.
Lankford has been off work for weeks while she was in quarantine when her mother got COVID-19.
She later was diagnosed with coronavirus and she says the unemployment agency, the Ohio Job and Family Services owes her a lot of money.
Lankford went on to say she is, “not the only one. They’re working on appeals from last year.”
Governor Mike DeWine has vowed to fix the problem by calling in outside help.
DeWine says the state is spending one million dollars on a contract for a team of experts to speed up the claims process.
Kim Henderson, a director of Ohio Job and Family Services said, “We have on the team, highly skilled experts on loan from Ohio’s top banking and insurance companies. They will provide short-term and long-term recommendations and solutions to help us improve our call center claims processing, and fraud detection efforts.”
The governor is blaming much of the backlog on fraudulent claims at job and family services. His new team of advisors is already working on it.
Jeffrey Fricke, ODJFS consultant said,” Fraud that we are experiencing in Ohio is a global issue. It is very organized crime.”
Lankford tells News Center 7 if DeWine can’t fix the problem maybe she and other voters will take that into consideration when the next election comes around.
As for the fraud cases, the state has now confirmed 100-thousand people have reported to them that they are the victims of attempted identity theft. The state’s going through those claims now.