New York Teachers Targeted in Unemployment Scam

No matter what the state of the world is, hackers and scammers are still out there.

Since the coronavirus outbreak began back in March many people have found themselves out of work and for some, they have had to file for unemployment benefits to help. Millions of people have had to go through the process of filing to make sure they receive some sort of income until they can find new jobs which is great but with so many people filing online, scammers have started to attack.

According to Spectrum News, hackers have begun to target teachers across New York by filing unemployment claims in their names without their knowledge. Apparently the hackers gained access into some virtual teaching portals to gather personal information. The portals were set up in some school districts to make things easier for teachers and schools while they were shut down during the pandemic and to be able to use the portals, teachers had to provide personal information.

Once the scammers gathered all the information they needed, they then used it to file unemployment claims in the teachers names. Some teachers told Spectrum News that they knew something was wrong when they started to receive unemployment forms in the mail, or payments from the labor department even though they had not personally filed for it.

Neither the labor department or the schools had any idea there was a problem until authorities questioned districts about why faculty and staff were filing for unemployment and that's when they launched an investigation, which is ongoing.

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