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Seattle – A Seattle area pair was indicted today in the Western District of Washington, for more than $1 million in fraud on COVID-19 relief programs, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown.

Tacoma – A former employee of Washington State’s Employment Security Department has been charged in a 20-count indictment for his scheme to exploit his employment for personal enrichment and to fraudulently distribute at least $360,000 in pandemic-related unemployment benefits, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman.

A Washington state tech executive was sentenced today in the Western District of Washington to two years in prison for perpetrating a scheme to fraudulently obtain COVID-19 disaster relief loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) through the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Seattle – A Washington State man was sentenced today to two years in prison for perpetrating a scheme to fraudulently obtain COVID-19 disaster relief

A Washington State man was sentenced today to two years in prison for perpetrating a scheme to fraudulently obtain COVID-19 disaster relief loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) through the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The COVID-19 pandemic had wide-ranging impacts within King County. County leaders and staff worked hard to shift practices to meet the needs of the changing environment. Our analysis and survey results indicate that employee experience and confidence in safety measures varied across the county, potentially indicating increased exposure risk for some employees.

The objective of the audit was to determine whether the use of Public Health Emergency Leave aligned with Port policy. In order to achieve this objective, Internal Audit utilized a risk-based approach, selected a sample of individuals who took Public Health Emergency Leave.

This report is the second in a series of savings-focused best practice reviews to be conducted by the Auditor’s Office. We conducted this analysis to illustrate some of the potential furlough options policymakers have when making decisions about how to reduce the County’s costs. Individual departments could also implement these types of furlough structures for their employees. We are not making recommendations at this time.

State management is responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining internal controls to ensure the financial statements are fairly presented, and to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and to prevent and detect fraud. We identified deficiencies in internal controls at the Employment Security Department (ESD) that adversely affected the State’s ability to prevent and detect fraud.

This report contains the results of our investigation of the illegitimate unemployment claims and payments at the Department from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020. The purpose of our investigation was to determine if a misappropriation had occurred and to provide the Department with recommendations to improve internal controls.