Police asked to investigate possible fraud in labor division

By: Samantha Lavien
Slavien@abc6.com
Twitter: @SLavienABC6

The Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training has asked for a state police investigation into allegations that one or more employees committed fraud.

A manager at the DLT spotted some red flags during a routine audit of the unemployment insurance division last week.

“We had our fraud investigators look at the information that our manager had flagged and determined that it looked like an alleged crime had happened,” said DLT spokesperson Michael Healey.

At that point the DLT got State Police involved.

“Its going to take us a while to go through all of the record, documents, with the investigators from the DLT to determine exactly what we do have,” said RI State Police Major Kevin O’Brien.

Major O’Brien says we’re not talking about a small case of fraud.

“I can tell you it is substantial. It’s not in the hundreds. It’s more in the thousands or tens of thousands,” said O’Brien.

Right now, the DLT believes at least one of its employees is involved.

There are roughly 100 people in the unemployment insurance division. Last year the staff in that division processed more than 76 thousand claims that the DLT paid more than $184 million for.

“More than 30 thousand businesses in Rhode Island fund that unemployment insurance system. Those businesses don’t pay all this money in unemployment insurance tax to hear that alleged fraud or abuse is happening,” said Healey. “We regard what’s allegedly happened as almost an attack on the DLT.”

The DLT would not comment about the status of the employee who is believed to be involved in this case.

We are told there is a potential that more people were involved.

The investigation is in its early stages.

(C) WLNE-TV 2015