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BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Over $1 million in state and federal Unemployment Insurance payments were made to dead people, according to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.

374 individuals who are no longer alive received these benefits.

The Louisiana Legislative Auditor states that this “amount represents 0.013 percent of the approximately $8.57 billion in unemployment benefits paid out by LWC between March 2020 and April 2021.”

Could these payments have been prevented by the Louisiana Workforce Commission?

The Louisiana Legislative Auditor says that some of these payments could have been prevented and a breakdown can been found below:

  • $629,091 could not have been prevented
  • $337,007 should have been prevented by LWC’s current controls
  • $123,194 could have been prevented if LWC conducted a weekly match with the Louisiana Department of Health’s death data instead of a monthly match

The audit states that the “Louisiana Workforce Commission can attempt to recover all of the potentially improper payments.”

A copy of the full report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor can be found here.