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On the coronavirus front, Washington’s Employment Security Department is under scrutiny not just for the speed of getting unemployment claims processed, but for how scammers seemingly got hundreds of millions of dollars in false claims — before some legitimately real Washingtonians who needed the money. Olympia correspondents Tom Banse reviews a busy time in the Uniquely Northwest News.

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And we turn now to correspondent Tom Banse in Olympia. Thanks for joining us today Tom.

So glad to be with you.

Tom, one of the biggest stories out of the coronavirus front, of course other than the public health effects and all of the unfortunate deaths, is the economic fallout and how many people have lost their jobs, you've been following that closely. In the State of Washington the Employment Security Department has had trouble keeping up frankly with all of the claims being made on them, over the past few months. Tell us what has been some of the issues that the Employment Security Department for Washington State has seen?

It's been a rough, now more than two months for the Employment Security Department. They started March with near record low unemployment, and just in a matter of weeks, when all these waves of layoffs happened during the lockdown beginnings, went to record high unemployment. And here we are in early June, and they still have a packed line. There are occasional emails that come into my inbox that are just full of anguish, from people that have been waiting to receive their unemployment check for eight weeks or more. Then on top of that now we have a new wrinkle, with this gang possibly from Africa of cyber criminals, that are now mucking up the works all over again, with fraudulent claims.

[Scott] Right, I'm glad you mentioned that because that was one of the big stories of the last several weeks, is not necessarily just how many unemployment claims were, but frankly how many fradulent ones there were. Hundreds of millions of dollars seemingly gone to these potential, these scammers, and sounds like some of them getting money before legitimate claims, people, actual residents who had been laid off. What was the Security Department's explanation for how that even happened?

Yes, we've asked the Employment Security Commissioner, Suzi LeVine a number of times about that, and her answer usually comes back to, there's a continuum that the State can prioritize, and in this case was directed by Congress to prioritize getting money out quickly to claimants, versus begin very strict and double checking every detail, which would slow down money that people need to get quite a bit. Congress said, "Here's all this money, "get it out as quick as you can." By not waiting to hear back from employers, was this person actually your employee, and did you actually lay them off, before it sent out checks. And the scammers took advantage of that. The State now has, on the other side of the continuum, of tightening things up and waiting to verify both the identity of the applicant for unemployment and the employer, and the wages that would've been paid, to calculate the benefit. So that now it's taking weeks again, for legitimate applicants to get through.