Covid-19 Scammers Will Learn There’s ‘No Free Lunch’ in the End

Covid-19 has changed that. There is now as increasing number of people out to game the system. Many false claims are being filed by people who know that, with the surge of people seeking aid, it is beyond the ability of limited government regulatory agencies to monitor and impede all illegal behavior. 

Many egregious examples of how this is done have come to my attention recently. The following are only some of those illegal activities being taken by people to defraud the unemployment system: 

1. The employee has either some or all of their hours cut by their employer on the business’s books yet continues to work and get paid under the table without having it reported to the government as taxable payroll. 

2. The "ex-employee" now files for unemployment or other government stimulus money benefits, while continuing to work and be paid off the books by their employer. This often results in the “ex-employee" actually making more money, once their unemployment benefits are calculated with other stimulus payments. 

3. The employee then stops paying their rent because they know there is a moratorium on evictions. The employee knows that the city councilmembers’ offices, which are charged with overseeing the no-eviction policy, are overloaded with thousands of claims. With limited employees to deal with these claims, it makes it impossible for them to determine the validity of specific claims in a timely manner. It is also worth mentioning that a city councilmember is generally more concerned with the rights and future votes of constituent tenants who don't pay their rent than they are with the rights of property owners, even if those owners can longer pay their mortgages or other expenses such as utilities, property taxes, and repairs. 

4. "Justice delayed is justice denied is a legal maxim. It means that if legal redress or equitable relief to an injured party is available, but is not forthcoming in a timely fashion, it is effectively the same as having no remedy at all." And yet, it has become standard legal practice to stall even what would be the most open and shut cases, by using expensive and protracted legal processes, especially if one side has the money and think they can bleed their opponent into settling, giving up, or never even starting legal action in the first place. It's become too expensive and time consuming to advocate for one’s rights in our courts, which were already incapable of dealing with their caseloads before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. 

Once someone asked a recent immigrant what he had learned about America. His answer was, "There's no free lunch." This bit of knowledge is something the current scammers of the government might learn from: It’s clear that the government can't go after them right now, but later, once the Covid-19 crisis has passed, these illegal activities will still be actionable. Sleep tight.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer, and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.