Reports

The Mississippi Department of Employment Security (MDES) administers Mississippi’s unemployment benefits programs. With the influx of jobless claims and COVID relief aid as a result of the pandemic, total unemployment benefit claims increased from $59.6 million in FY 2019 to $2.1 billion in FY 2020. With this infusion of money came massive fraud and misspending. For example, from FY 2020 to FY 2021, known overpayments increased from $118 million to $474 million. The massive loss of money from Mississippi’s unemployment fund is partially the result of MDES bypassing or altering their own...

This Single Audit identifies federal funds spent by state agencies from July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021. During this time, many state agencies were drawing down federal stimulus dollars from the Coronavirus Relief Fund. In this audit millions of questioned costs were discovered. Notable findings include that the Mississippi Department of Employment Security saw a 301 percent increase in known overpayments from the previous year and made at least $473 million in improper or fraudulent unemployment payments this year. This included unemployment payments to prisoners and people outside of...

The objective for this management advisory report was to monitor and assess how the company is using CARES Act funds and the controls it has in place to accurately account for and report on them.The company experienced a sharp drop in ridership and passenger revenues in March 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The company’s response included aggressive cost-cutting actions such as cancelling some of its train service and reducing management pay and retirement benefits. Despite these actions, the company projected that revenues would still not cover its reduced costs and requested...