During the COVID-19 pandemic, a call center employee improperly doled out more than $3 million in federal unemployment benefits − including some money for herself, according to a new Ohio Inspector General's report.
The subcontractor, Ericka Holland, was hired to answer questions about federal unemployment benefits amid a surge in claims because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Holland overrode fraud alerts on claims, verified individuals' identities, checked their eligibility and resolved other unemployment claim issues, according to the report released Thursday.
The result: $3,247,402 in benefits were paid to ineligible claimants. Holland didn't know these individuals personally, the investigation found.
However, Holland is also accused of handling her own unemployment benefits claim totaling $56,780 in federal benefits − even though she wasn't laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She was hired as a call center employee on June 28, 2020, and was fired two months later for making outbound calls without her supervisor's permission and working outside of scheduled hours.
Holland's employment underscores the chaotic number of subcontractors employed in 2020 to tackle the massive backlog of unemployment benefit claims. She worked for Randstad, a subcontractor of Harte Hanks, a subcontractor of Deloitte, a subcontractor of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. --->READ MORE HERE
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Six San Francisco public transport employees who were fired for refusing to get COVID-19 vaccines have been awarded more than $1 million each.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) employees filed a discrimination lawsuit saying they were wrongly terminated for refusing the vaccine on “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Federal jurors this week awarded the group a total of $7.8 million, or $1.3 million each.
An official for BART, which connects the San Francisco Peninsula with communities in the East and South bays, told KRON 4 it had “no comment” on the ruling.
BART issued a new COVID-19 vaccination policy in October 2021 that required all employees to be fully vaccinated.
Those who asked for exemptions because of “sincerely held religious beliefs” were fired, the plaintiffs’ attorneys alleged in the lawsuit, filed by the Pacific Justice Institute.
“Exclusion of religious people from the enjoyment of a right stands in violation of the First Amendment’s religion clauses and federal and state anti-discrimination in employment laws. 109 employees’ requests for religious exemption were denied,” the lawsuit said. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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