A CALIFORNIA man had $10,000 taken from his account by EDD after it was blocked due to suspected fraud.
During the pandemic, many people went on unemployment after losing their jobs.
![](https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/01/bad-time-not-fair-says-872211469.jpg)
![Many people went on unemployment during the pandemic after business closures and job loss](https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/01/atm-seen-bank-america-january-869759735-3.jpg)
However, many people were also being hacked, so California’s Employment Development Department (EDD) stepped in.
In 2020, Anthony Serafino lost his job at a bowling alley during the pandemic and went on unemployment, exclusively reported by local ABC affiliate WABC-TV.
He realized something was wrong with his account when he went to take $20 from his EDD debit card and it was “blocked.”
“They froze my account and took my money… super weird,” Serafino said.
“The really weird thing is that I didn’t get informed about any of this.
“If anything happens they should inform me.”
He went to his bank but they informed him that they could not help him and he had to call EDD.
However, Serafino said that no one at EDD could explain why his account had frozen.
“They said only Bank of America can do that. I called Bank of America. They said only EDD can do that… it went back and forth,” Serafino said.
The bank eventually unfroze his account but he realized that he had lost a large sum of money.
“It was exactly $10,000. It was in different increments, but it added up to $10,000,” he said.
When he contacted EDD and the bank again, they now claimed that there was no problem.
“Both said there’s no problem with my card.
“So since there’s no problem, they couldn’t help me.
“But I was like, clearly there’s a problem if I’m missing 10,000,” he laughed.
Serafino speculated that his account had been flagged by the EDD for fraud because he had been the victim of a scam a few months prior.
He reached out to 7 On Your Side for help with his lost money and they contacted EDD and the state senator who represented the district.
A few days later, all the missing money was returned to Serafino’s account.
EDD made a statement that 350,000 debit cards had been frozen due to possible fraud, but Serafino was not comforted by this.
“If they told me why the money was gone, I’d be fine, but it makes me feel like if I didn’t reach out to you or anybody else, I would never have seen that money again,” Serafino said.
The estimated fraud amount during the pandemic was between $100 billion and $135 billion, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
“We estimate that fraud accounted for 11-15% of the total amount of unemployment insurance benefits paid during the pandemic,” the report said.
In May 2023, states reported finding about $55.8 billion in total overpayments, $5.3 billion of which were fraudulent.”
The states were able to recover about $6.8 billion from March 2020 to March 2023, including $1.2 billion in fraudulent payments.