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2021-10-20
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Bank of America’s California Partnership, Long Flourishing, Is Roiled by Unemployment Fraud<blockquote>美国银行在加州的合作伙伴关系长期蓬勃发展,但因失业欺诈而陷入困境</blockquote>
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Then millions of Americans lost their jobs at once.</p><p><blockquote>美国银行认为帮助加利福尼亚州等州发放失业救济金是一笔好生意。然后数百万美国人立刻失去了工作。</blockquote></p><p> The bank is the longtime middleman for California’s unemployment program, loading jobless benefits onto prepaid debit cards. Normally the task is mundane, but that changed with the pandemic last year. Unemployment claims surged, and so did related fraud.</p><p><blockquote>该银行长期以来一直是加州失业计划的中间人,将失业救济金存入预付借记卡。通常这项任务是平凡的,但随着去年的疫情,这种情况发生了变化。申请失业救济人数激增,相关欺诈也是如此。</blockquote></p><p> To fight back, the state and bank cut off benefits to hundreds of thousands of recipients. Many were out-of-work Californians with legitimate claims, who soon took to social media or called state legislators to complain about both the government and the bank. Bank of America wants to stop distributing the benefits for California but the state has told it no, locking the two into an uneasy union.</p><p><blockquote>为了反击,州政府和银行切断了数十万领取者的福利。许多人是有合法要求的失业加州人,他们很快就在社交媒体上或致电州立法者抱怨政府和银行。美国银行希望停止向加州发放福利,但该州拒绝了,这使得两家银行陷入了不稳定的联盟。</blockquote></p><p> The federal government responded to the coronavirus pandemic quickly last year, amping up unemployment benefits and making them available to workers who wouldn’t usually qualify. The aid helped ward off a long-term recession, but many states and their financial partners fumbled with the logistics of distributing so much money in such a short time. Some overpaid benefits; others struggled to reach the right people.</p><p><blockquote>去年,联邦政府对冠状病毒大流行做出了快速反应,提高了失业救济金,并向通常不符合条件的工人提供了失业救济金。援助帮助避免了长期衰退,但许多州及其金融合作伙伴在如此短的时间内分配如此多的资金的后勤工作中笨手笨脚。一些过高的福利;其他人努力接触到合适的人。</blockquote></p><p> Some states are being forced to rethink how they give out benefits. California is now developing a program that gives laid-off workers the option to get benefits through a direct deposit instead. Bank of America, though it remains California’s provider, recently exited from agreements in most of the states where it distributed unemployment payments.</p><p><blockquote>一些州被迫重新考虑如何发放福利。加州目前正在制定一项计划,让下岗工人可以选择通过直接存款获得福利。美国银行虽然仍是加利福尼亚州的提供商,但最近在其发放失业救济金的大多数州退出了协议。</blockquote></p><p> “The pandemic radically altered the underlying economics of unemployment programs for service providers like Bank of America,” a bank spokesman said. “Nonetheless, we will continue to devote the resources necessary to properly serve the agency and California unemployment benefit recipients.”</p><p><blockquote>“美国银行发言人说:”大流行病从根本上改变了美国银行等服务提供商失业计划的基本经济学。“尽管如此,我们仍将继续投入必要的资源,为该机构和加州失业救济金领取者提供妥善服务”。</blockquote></p><p> The bank doled out more than 8 million cards with more than $100 billion in benefits last year for California’s Employment Development Department, or EDD. State auditors say that swindlers siphoned billions of dollars from the program. In some cases, people used stolen identities to get unemployment benefits from the agency. In other cases, workers applied for their benefits lawfully, then found that their Bank of America cards had been hacked.</p><p><blockquote>去年,该银行为加州就业发展部(EDD)发放了 800 多万张卡片,福利超过 1000 亿美元。州审计员表示,骗子从该计划中抽走了数十亿美元。在某些情况下,人们使用被盗的身份从该机构获得失业救济金。在其他情况下,工人合法申请福利,然后发现他们的美国银行卡被黑了。</blockquote></p><p> A state auditor’s report in January said that by the EDD’s own estimate, as much as $10.4 billion of the roughly $111 billion it paid out between March and December 2020 was potentially lost to fraud. In one case, the report said, more than 1,700 unemployment claims came from a single address.</p><p><blockquote>州审计员 1 月份的一份报告称,根据 EDD 自己的估计,在 2020 年 3 月至 12 月期间支付的约 1110 亿美元中,有多达 104 亿美元可能因欺诈而损失。报告称,在一个案例中,超过 1,700 起失业救济申请来自一个地址。</blockquote></p><p> Afterward, the EDD flagged nearly 1.5 million claims for review. It eventually disqualified about half of them. Additionally, the bank froze about 450,000 cards, most at the direction of the state agency. Many legitimate recipients were furious to find that their weekly benefits had stopped.</p><p><blockquote>随后,EDD 标记了近 150 万份索赔进行审查。它最终取消了其中一半的资格。此外,该银行冻结了约45万张卡,其中大部分是在国家机构的指示下冻结的。许多合法领取者发现他们每周的福利停止了,他们非常愤怒。</blockquote></p><p> In a statement, an EDD spokeswoman attributed the jump in fraud to “sophisticated scammers sitting on a treasure trove of stolen personal identifying information” who targeted the new program geared toward providing quick assistance to the self-employed.</p><p><blockquote>EDD 发言人在一份声明中将欺诈行为的激增归咎于 “老练的骗子坐在被盗个人身份信息的宝库上”,他们瞄准了旨在为个体经营者提供快速援助的新计划。</blockquote></p><p> Californians whose benefits were erroneously frozen complained of being ping-ponged between the EDD and Bank of America call centers. Those who visited bank branches found that tellers had only minimal access to the system that administers the cards. The phone lines at the EDD were so busy that a couple of startups began offering automatic dialing to help callers get through.</p><p><blockquote>福利被错误冻结的加州人抱怨说,他们在EDD和美国银行看涨期权中心之间摇摆不定。那些走访银行分行的人发现,出纳员只能很少接触到管理银行卡的系统。EDD的电话线非常繁忙,以至于几家初创公司开始提供自动拨号来帮助来电者接通。</blockquote></p><p> Jackie Carey, who lives in the Los Angeles area, lost her job at a rental-car company when the pandemic hit. Ms. Carey said that somehow, swindlers used her credentials to withdraw about $5,000 from her prepaid card at a nearby bank branch.</p><p><blockquote>住在洛杉矶地区的杰基·凯里在疫情来袭时失去了在一家汽车租赁公司的工作。凯里女士说,不知何故,骗子使用她的凭证在附近的一家银行分行从她的预付卡中提取了大约5000美元。</blockquote></p><p> When Ms. Carey called Bank of America, it froze the card. For a month and a half, she couldn’t access the roughly $22,000 she had on the card.</p><p><blockquote>当凯里女士打电话给美国银行时,它冻结了这张卡。一个半月以来,她一直无法动用卡上的大约 22,000 美元。</blockquote></p><p> Ms. Carey said the bank told her that the state had frozen her benefits, but the state told her that it hadn’t. The state started sending her unemployment benefits via paper checks so she could continue to get weekly payments. Bank of America eventually unlocked her card, but she has since joined a class-action lawsuit against the bank.</p><p><blockquote>凯里女士说,银行告诉她州政府已经冻结了她的福利,但州政府告诉她没有。州政府开始通过纸质支票给她发放失业救济金,这样她就可以继续每周领取工资。美国银行最终解锁了她的卡,但她此后加入了针对该银行的集体诉讼。</blockquote></p><p> Bank of America said in a statement Monday that its “No. 1 goal always has been to ensure legitimate recipients could access their benefits.” The bank also said it has “committed to additional measures to help unemployment recipients who have been victimized by fraud receive their benefits as quickly as possible.”</p><p><blockquote>美国银行在周一的一份声明中表示,其 “首要目标始终是确保合法受益人能够获得他们的福利”。该银行还表示,它 “致力于采取更多措施,帮助遭受欺诈的失业领取者尽快领取救济金”。</blockquote></p><p></p><p> Bank of America’s relationship with California goes back generations. One-fifth of its branches are there, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. So are more than one-third of its outstanding mortgage loans, according to financial disclosures. The bank has underwritten more municipal bonds for California over the past decade than any other bank, according to Refinitiv.</p><p><blockquote>美国银行与加州的关系可以追溯到几代人之前。根据 S&P Global Market Intelligence 的数据,其五分之一的分支机构位于那里。根据财务披露,超过三分之一的未偿还抵押贷款也是如此。据路孚特称,过去十年,该银行为加州承销的市政债券比任何其他银行都多。</blockquote></p><p> So when California started offering unemployment benefits on prepaid debit cards around 2010, Bank of America was a natural partner. At the time, the cards were a novel way to reach the unbanked. JPMorgan Chase & Co. prepaid cards were used to get benefits to Hurricane Katrina victims in 2005, often distributed from convention centers and stadiums that housed the displaced.</p><p><blockquote>因此,当加州在2010年左右开始在预付借记卡上提供失业救济金时,美国银行是一个天然的合作伙伴。当时,这些卡是接触没有银行账户的人的一种新颖方式。2005年,摩根大通预付卡被用来向卡特里娜飓风的受害者发放福利,这些福利通常来自收容流离失所者的会议中心和体育场。</blockquote></p><p> Bank of America collects fees from merchants when a person swipes a benefits card, and in California the bank agreed to share some revenue with the state. In July, the bank took in $14.7 million from swipe fees, according to data provided by the EDD. California pocketed $3.6 million.</p><p><blockquote>当一个人刷福利卡时,美国银行会向商家收取费用,在加利福尼亚州,该银行同意与州政府分享部分收入。根据 EDD 提供的数据,7 月份,该银行从刷卡费用中获得了 1,470 万美元。加州中饱私囊360万美元。</blockquote></p><p> But the bank says that overall, it is losing money. In a letter to lawmakers, Bank of America said that the program has been profitable only one year out of the past 10. The bank says it lost roughly $178 million last year, far more than any previous year, after beefing up call-center staff and spending more on fraud prevention.</p><p><blockquote>但该银行表示,总体而言,它正在亏损。美国银行在给立法者的一封信中表示,该计划在过去 10 年中只有一年实现了盈利。该银行表示,在加强看涨期权中心员工并增加欺诈预防支出后,去年损失了约 1.78 亿美元,远远超过前一年。</blockquote></p><p> The class-action lawsuit that Ms. Carey joined says Bank of America should have put the benefits on chip cards, which are considered more secure. The bank has told lawmakers that the state asked for magnetic-stripe cards, and that chip cards wouldn’t help with catching people who applied for benefits using false identities. Still, the EDD said in July that new cards would come with chips.</p><p><blockquote>凯里加入的集体诉讼称,美国银行应该将福利放在芯片卡上,因为芯片卡被认为更安全。该银行告诉立法者,州政府要求提供磁条卡,而芯片卡无助于抓住使用虚假身份申请福利的人。尽管如此,EDD 在 7 月份表示,新卡将配备芯片。</blockquote></p><p> The bank has said it told the state that it wanted to stop administering the program when its contract was up for renewal this year. An EDD spokesperson said the state exercised its right to renew the contract for two more years “to help ensure continued service to claimants.”</p><p><blockquote>该银行表示,它告诉州政府,当合同今年续签时,它希望停止管理该计划。EDD 发言人说,州政府行使了将合同再延长两年的权利,“以帮助确保继续为索赔人提供服务”。</blockquote></p><p> A spokesman said the bank has advised California “that we would like to exit this business as soon as possible.”</p><p><blockquote>一位发言人表示,该银行已告知加州 “我们希望尽快退出这项业务”。</blockquote></p><p></p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Bank of America’s California Partnership, Long Flourishing, Is Roiled by Unemployment Fraud<blockquote>美国银行在加州的合作伙伴关系长期蓬勃发展,但因失业欺诈而陷入困境</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nBank of America’s California Partnership, Long Flourishing, Is Roiled by Unemployment Fraud<blockquote>美国银行在加州的合作伙伴关系长期蓬勃发展,但因失业欺诈而陷入困境</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n<p class=\"head\">\n<strong class=\"h-name small\">Wall Street Journal</strong><span class=\"h-time small\">2021-10-20 18:01</span>\n</p>\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\n<p>Bank of America Corp.thought helping states such as California hand out unemployment benefits would be good business. Then millions of Americans lost their jobs at once.</p><p><blockquote>美国银行认为帮助加利福尼亚州等州发放失业救济金是一笔好生意。然后数百万美国人立刻失去了工作。</blockquote></p><p> The bank is the longtime middleman for California’s unemployment program, loading jobless benefits onto prepaid debit cards. Normally the task is mundane, but that changed with the pandemic last year. Unemployment claims surged, and so did related fraud.</p><p><blockquote>该银行长期以来一直是加州失业计划的中间人,将失业救济金存入预付借记卡。通常这项任务是平凡的,但随着去年的疫情,这种情况发生了变化。申请失业救济人数激增,相关欺诈也是如此。</blockquote></p><p> To fight back, the state and bank cut off benefits to hundreds of thousands of recipients. Many were out-of-work Californians with legitimate claims, who soon took to social media or called state legislators to complain about both the government and the bank. Bank of America wants to stop distributing the benefits for California but the state has told it no, locking the two into an uneasy union.</p><p><blockquote>为了反击,州政府和银行切断了数十万领取者的福利。许多人是有合法要求的失业加州人,他们很快就在社交媒体上或致电州立法者抱怨政府和银行。美国银行希望停止向加州发放福利,但该州拒绝了,这使得两家银行陷入了不稳定的联盟。</blockquote></p><p> The federal government responded to the coronavirus pandemic quickly last year, amping up unemployment benefits and making them available to workers who wouldn’t usually qualify. The aid helped ward off a long-term recession, but many states and their financial partners fumbled with the logistics of distributing so much money in such a short time. Some overpaid benefits; others struggled to reach the right people.</p><p><blockquote>去年,联邦政府对冠状病毒大流行做出了快速反应,提高了失业救济金,并向通常不符合条件的工人提供了失业救济金。援助帮助避免了长期衰退,但许多州及其金融合作伙伴在如此短的时间内分配如此多的资金的后勤工作中笨手笨脚。一些过高的福利;其他人努力接触到合适的人。</blockquote></p><p> Some states are being forced to rethink how they give out benefits. California is now developing a program that gives laid-off workers the option to get benefits through a direct deposit instead. Bank of America, though it remains California’s provider, recently exited from agreements in most of the states where it distributed unemployment payments.</p><p><blockquote>一些州被迫重新考虑如何发放福利。加州目前正在制定一项计划,让下岗工人可以选择通过直接存款获得福利。美国银行虽然仍是加利福尼亚州的提供商,但最近在其发放失业救济金的大多数州退出了协议。</blockquote></p><p> “The pandemic radically altered the underlying economics of unemployment programs for service providers like Bank of America,” a bank spokesman said. “Nonetheless, we will continue to devote the resources necessary to properly serve the agency and California unemployment benefit recipients.”</p><p><blockquote>“美国银行发言人说:”大流行病从根本上改变了美国银行等服务提供商失业计划的基本经济学。“尽管如此,我们仍将继续投入必要的资源,为该机构和加州失业救济金领取者提供妥善服务”。</blockquote></p><p> The bank doled out more than 8 million cards with more than $100 billion in benefits last year for California’s Employment Development Department, or EDD. State auditors say that swindlers siphoned billions of dollars from the program. In some cases, people used stolen identities to get unemployment benefits from the agency. In other cases, workers applied for their benefits lawfully, then found that their Bank of America cards had been hacked.</p><p><blockquote>去年,该银行为加州就业发展部(EDD)发放了 800 多万张卡片,福利超过 1000 亿美元。州审计员表示,骗子从该计划中抽走了数十亿美元。在某些情况下,人们使用被盗的身份从该机构获得失业救济金。在其他情况下,工人合法申请福利,然后发现他们的美国银行卡被黑了。</blockquote></p><p> A state auditor’s report in January said that by the EDD’s own estimate, as much as $10.4 billion of the roughly $111 billion it paid out between March and December 2020 was potentially lost to fraud. In one case, the report said, more than 1,700 unemployment claims came from a single address.</p><p><blockquote>州审计员 1 月份的一份报告称,根据 EDD 自己的估计,在 2020 年 3 月至 12 月期间支付的约 1110 亿美元中,有多达 104 亿美元可能因欺诈而损失。报告称,在一个案例中,超过 1,700 起失业救济申请来自一个地址。</blockquote></p><p> Afterward, the EDD flagged nearly 1.5 million claims for review. It eventually disqualified about half of them. Additionally, the bank froze about 450,000 cards, most at the direction of the state agency. Many legitimate recipients were furious to find that their weekly benefits had stopped.</p><p><blockquote>随后,EDD 标记了近 150 万份索赔进行审查。它最终取消了其中一半的资格。此外,该银行冻结了约45万张卡,其中大部分是在国家机构的指示下冻结的。许多合法领取者发现他们每周的福利停止了,他们非常愤怒。</blockquote></p><p> In a statement, an EDD spokeswoman attributed the jump in fraud to “sophisticated scammers sitting on a treasure trove of stolen personal identifying information” who targeted the new program geared toward providing quick assistance to the self-employed.</p><p><blockquote>EDD 发言人在一份声明中将欺诈行为的激增归咎于 “老练的骗子坐在被盗个人身份信息的宝库上”,他们瞄准了旨在为个体经营者提供快速援助的新计划。</blockquote></p><p> Californians whose benefits were erroneously frozen complained of being ping-ponged between the EDD and Bank of America call centers. Those who visited bank branches found that tellers had only minimal access to the system that administers the cards. The phone lines at the EDD were so busy that a couple of startups began offering automatic dialing to help callers get through.</p><p><blockquote>福利被错误冻结的加州人抱怨说,他们在EDD和美国银行看涨期权中心之间摇摆不定。那些走访银行分行的人发现,出纳员只能很少接触到管理银行卡的系统。EDD的电话线非常繁忙,以至于几家初创公司开始提供自动拨号来帮助来电者接通。</blockquote></p><p> Jackie Carey, who lives in the Los Angeles area, lost her job at a rental-car company when the pandemic hit. Ms. Carey said that somehow, swindlers used her credentials to withdraw about $5,000 from her prepaid card at a nearby bank branch.</p><p><blockquote>住在洛杉矶地区的杰基·凯里在疫情来袭时失去了在一家汽车租赁公司的工作。凯里女士说,不知何故,骗子使用她的凭证在附近的一家银行分行从她的预付卡中提取了大约5000美元。</blockquote></p><p> When Ms. Carey called Bank of America, it froze the card. For a month and a half, she couldn’t access the roughly $22,000 she had on the card.</p><p><blockquote>当凯里女士打电话给美国银行时,它冻结了这张卡。一个半月以来,她一直无法动用卡上的大约 22,000 美元。</blockquote></p><p> Ms. Carey said the bank told her that the state had frozen her benefits, but the state told her that it hadn’t. The state started sending her unemployment benefits via paper checks so she could continue to get weekly payments. Bank of America eventually unlocked her card, but she has since joined a class-action lawsuit against the bank.</p><p><blockquote>凯里女士说,银行告诉她州政府已经冻结了她的福利,但州政府告诉她没有。州政府开始通过纸质支票给她发放失业救济金,这样她就可以继续每周领取工资。美国银行最终解锁了她的卡,但她此后加入了针对该银行的集体诉讼。</blockquote></p><p> Bank of America said in a statement Monday that its “No. 1 goal always has been to ensure legitimate recipients could access their benefits.” The bank also said it has “committed to additional measures to help unemployment recipients who have been victimized by fraud receive their benefits as quickly as possible.”</p><p><blockquote>美国银行在周一的一份声明中表示,其 “首要目标始终是确保合法受益人能够获得他们的福利”。该银行还表示,它 “致力于采取更多措施,帮助遭受欺诈的失业领取者尽快领取救济金”。</blockquote></p><p></p><p> Bank of America’s relationship with California goes back generations. One-fifth of its branches are there, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. So are more than one-third of its outstanding mortgage loans, according to financial disclosures. The bank has underwritten more municipal bonds for California over the past decade than any other bank, according to Refinitiv.</p><p><blockquote>美国银行与加州的关系可以追溯到几代人之前。根据 S&P Global Market Intelligence 的数据,其五分之一的分支机构位于那里。根据财务披露,超过三分之一的未偿还抵押贷款也是如此。据路孚特称,过去十年,该银行为加州承销的市政债券比任何其他银行都多。</blockquote></p><p> So when California started offering unemployment benefits on prepaid debit cards around 2010, Bank of America was a natural partner. At the time, the cards were a novel way to reach the unbanked. JPMorgan Chase & Co. prepaid cards were used to get benefits to Hurricane Katrina victims in 2005, often distributed from convention centers and stadiums that housed the displaced.</p><p><blockquote>因此,当加州在2010年左右开始在预付借记卡上提供失业救济金时,美国银行是一个天然的合作伙伴。当时,这些卡是接触没有银行账户的人的一种新颖方式。2005年,摩根大通预付卡被用来向卡特里娜飓风的受害者发放福利,这些福利通常来自收容流离失所者的会议中心和体育场。</blockquote></p><p> Bank of America collects fees from merchants when a person swipes a benefits card, and in California the bank agreed to share some revenue with the state. In July, the bank took in $14.7 million from swipe fees, according to data provided by the EDD. California pocketed $3.6 million.</p><p><blockquote>当一个人刷福利卡时,美国银行会向商家收取费用,在加利福尼亚州,该银行同意与州政府分享部分收入。根据 EDD 提供的数据,7 月份,该银行从刷卡费用中获得了 1,470 万美元。加州中饱私囊360万美元。</blockquote></p><p> But the bank says that overall, it is losing money. In a letter to lawmakers, Bank of America said that the program has been profitable only one year out of the past 10. The bank says it lost roughly $178 million last year, far more than any previous year, after beefing up call-center staff and spending more on fraud prevention.</p><p><blockquote>但该银行表示,总体而言,它正在亏损。美国银行在给立法者的一封信中表示,该计划在过去 10 年中只有一年实现了盈利。该银行表示,在加强看涨期权中心员工并增加欺诈预防支出后,去年损失了约 1.78 亿美元,远远超过前一年。</blockquote></p><p> The class-action lawsuit that Ms. Carey joined says Bank of America should have put the benefits on chip cards, which are considered more secure. The bank has told lawmakers that the state asked for magnetic-stripe cards, and that chip cards wouldn’t help with catching people who applied for benefits using false identities. Still, the EDD said in July that new cards would come with chips.</p><p><blockquote>凯里加入的集体诉讼称,美国银行应该将福利放在芯片卡上,因为芯片卡被认为更安全。该银行告诉立法者,州政府要求提供磁条卡,而芯片卡无助于抓住使用虚假身份申请福利的人。尽管如此,EDD 在 7 月份表示,新卡将配备芯片。</blockquote></p><p> The bank has said it told the state that it wanted to stop administering the program when its contract was up for renewal this year. An EDD spokesperson said the state exercised its right to renew the contract for two more years “to help ensure continued service to claimants.”</p><p><blockquote>该银行表示,它告诉州政府,当合同今年续签时,它希望停止管理该计划。EDD 发言人说,州政府行使了将合同再延长两年的权利,“以帮助确保继续为索赔人提供服务”。</blockquote></p><p> A spokesman said the bank has advised California “that we would like to exit this business as soon as possible.”</p><p><blockquote>一位发言人表示,该银行已告知加州 “我们希望尽快退出这项业务”。</blockquote></p><p></p>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n<p> 来源:<a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/bank-of-americas-california-partnership-long-flourishing-is-roiled-by-unemployment-fraud-11634722201?mod=hp_lead_pos1\">Wall Street Journal</a></p>\n<p>为提升您的阅读体验,我们对本页面进行了排版优化</p>\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BAC":"美国银行"},"source_url":"https://www.wsj.com/articles/bank-of-americas-california-partnership-long-flourishing-is-roiled-by-unemployment-fraud-11634722201?mod=hp_lead_pos1","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1179387024","content_text":"Bank of America Corp.thought helping states such as California hand out unemployment benefits would be good business. Then millions of Americans lost their jobs at once.\nThe bank is the longtime middleman for California’s unemployment program, loading jobless benefits onto prepaid debit cards. Normally the task is mundane, but that changed with the pandemic last year. Unemployment claims surged, and so did related fraud.\nTo fight back, the state and bank cut off benefits to hundreds of thousands of recipients. Many were out-of-work Californians with legitimate claims, who soon took to social media or called state legislators to complain about both the government and the bank. Bank of America wants to stop distributing the benefits for California but the state has told it no, locking the two into an uneasy union.\nThe federal government responded to the coronavirus pandemic quickly last year, amping up unemployment benefits and making them available to workers who wouldn’t usually qualify. The aid helped ward off a long-term recession, but many states and their financial partners fumbled with the logistics of distributing so much money in such a short time. Some overpaid benefits; others struggled to reach the right people.\nSome states are being forced to rethink how they give out benefits. California is now developing a program that gives laid-off workers the option to get benefits through a direct deposit instead. Bank of America, though it remains California’s provider, recently exited from agreements in most of the states where it distributed unemployment payments.\n“The pandemic radically altered the underlying economics of unemployment programs for service providers like Bank of America,” a bank spokesman said. “Nonetheless, we will continue to devote the resources necessary to properly serve the agency and California unemployment benefit recipients.”\nThe bank doled out more than 8 million cards with more than $100 billion in benefits last year for California’s Employment Development Department, or EDD. State auditors say that swindlers siphoned billions of dollars from the program. In some cases, people used stolen identities to get unemployment benefits from the agency. In other cases, workers applied for their benefits lawfully, then found that their Bank of America cards had been hacked.\nA state auditor’s report in January said that by the EDD’s own estimate, as much as $10.4 billion of the roughly $111 billion it paid out between March and December 2020 was potentially lost to fraud. In one case, the report said, more than 1,700 unemployment claims came from a single address.\nAfterward, the EDD flagged nearly 1.5 million claims for review. It eventually disqualified about half of them. Additionally, the bank froze about 450,000 cards, most at the direction of the state agency. Many legitimate recipients were furious to find that their weekly benefits had stopped.\nIn a statement, an EDD spokeswoman attributed the jump in fraud to “sophisticated scammers sitting on a treasure trove of stolen personal identifying information” who targeted the new program geared toward providing quick assistance to the self-employed.\nCalifornians whose benefits were erroneously frozen complained of being ping-ponged between the EDD and Bank of America call centers. Those who visited bank branches found that tellers had only minimal access to the system that administers the cards. The phone lines at the EDD were so busy that a couple of startups began offering automatic dialing to help callers get through.\nJackie Carey, who lives in the Los Angeles area, lost her job at a rental-car company when the pandemic hit. Ms. Carey said that somehow, swindlers used her credentials to withdraw about $5,000 from her prepaid card at a nearby bank branch.\nWhen Ms. Carey called Bank of America, it froze the card. For a month and a half, she couldn’t access the roughly $22,000 she had on the card.\nMs. Carey said the bank told her that the state had frozen her benefits, but the state told her that it hadn’t. The state started sending her unemployment benefits via paper checks so she could continue to get weekly payments. Bank of America eventually unlocked her card, but she has since joined a class-action lawsuit against the bank.\nBank of America said in a statement Monday that its “No. 1 goal always has been to ensure legitimate recipients could access their benefits.” The bank also said it has “committed to additional measures to help unemployment recipients who have been victimized by fraud receive their benefits as quickly as possible.”\nBank of America’s relationship with California goes back generations. One-fifth of its branches are there, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. So are more than one-third of its outstanding mortgage loans, according to financial disclosures. The bank has underwritten more municipal bonds for California over the past decade than any other bank, according to Refinitiv.\nSo when California started offering unemployment benefits on prepaid debit cards around 2010, Bank of America was a natural partner. At the time, the cards were a novel way to reach the unbanked. JPMorgan Chase & Co. prepaid cards were used to get benefits to Hurricane Katrina victims in 2005, often distributed from convention centers and stadiums that housed the displaced.\nBank of America collects fees from merchants when a person swipes a benefits card, and in California the bank agreed to share some revenue with the state. In July, the bank took in $14.7 million from swipe fees, according to data provided by the EDD. California pocketed $3.6 million.\nBut the bank says that overall, it is losing money. In a letter to lawmakers, Bank of America said that the program has been profitable only one year out of the past 10. The bank says it lost roughly $178 million last year, far more than any previous year, after beefing up call-center staff and spending more on fraud prevention.\nThe class-action lawsuit that Ms. Carey joined says Bank of America should have put the benefits on chip cards, which are considered more secure. The bank has told lawmakers that the state asked for magnetic-stripe cards, and that chip cards wouldn’t help with catching people who applied for benefits using false identities. Still, the EDD said in July that new cards would come with chips.\nThe bank has said it told the state that it wanted to stop administering the program when its contract was up for renewal this year. An EDD spokesperson said the state exercised its right to renew the contract for two more years “to help ensure continued service to claimants.”\nA spokesman said the bank has advised California “that we would like to exit this business as soon as possible.”","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"BAC":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1001,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"CN","currentLanguage":"CN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":4,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ZH_CN"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/859441865"}
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