[themisfitkitten]

Our company has a former employee who was let go due to misuse of company funds, insubordination, sharing company secrets, etc. This person has previously apparently collected UC fraudulently and has a long criminal history; no, we were not aware of this at the time of his hiring and yes, we now do background checks on all new employees. This is a small company that is working on improving hiring practices, among other things, and there had not been a situation like this previously. Live and learn, right?

We have appealed his unemployment claim but the UC referee didn't feel that the evidence my boss chose to present was enough to deny the claim, so to my knowledge--he is collecting unemployment. We are in an industry where everyone talks, and word has gotten back to us from very reliable sources that this man is working "as a consultant" for another company. We are certain that he would not have notified UC of his employment, because he did not when he started working here--we also believe that until (and UNLESS) the proper tax paperwork is filed, there is no way for UC to catch this.

Is there anything (legal, obviously) that we may be able to do to report this UC fraud? Since we only have hearsay, I am not sure what should be reported, or if someone should be nudged in his direction to investigate.

I would appreciate any opinions and suggestions--I don't feel that this person intends to stop trying to benefit himself in any way possible, and on principle, I don't want him to harm another company as he has done with mine. Thank you.

[twinkiedooter]

Your company would be receiving notification of him collecting his weekly benefits. Has your company received any such notifications of his receiving these benefits? Check with Unemployement for these notifications if your company somehow does not get them mailed to them.

[themisfitkitten]

We have not received the actual confirmation of benefits yet because this hearing happened very recently--we did receive notification that the claim we appealed had been allowed, so we should start getting those notifications pretty soon. Although we did send another appeal, we don't think it will do much good--we elaborated on a few details that my boss had forgotten at the hearing, but knowing that they won't accept new evidence, they probably will just consider this something the boss "should have brought up."

[twinkiedooter]

Once you start receiving these notifications of him receiving the benefits you can contact Unemployment and incate that he is employed as a consultant at such and such company they will do their own investiation and for each week (or count per week) he collects Unemployment benefits he will be prosecuted accordingly for the fraud.

Why didn't your company have him prosecuted for the misuse of company funds? Did he embezzle the funds or just use them inappropriately? If embezzlement the state will prosecute the case for your company and if just used inappropriately your company may be able to sue him in civil court for the return of the money he misused.

[themisfitkitten]

Wonderful, thank you; I appreciate your response. Hopefully this will sort this out a little bit. :)

[themisfitkitten]

Oh--I missed the other part of your answer. The bosses are in the process of discussing the actual misuse of funds with the appropriate authorities. That's a whole other can of worms, lol...

[twinkiedooter]

Well let them know they need to gather their paperwork up and make an appointment with the local district attorney's office and they will prosecute him on this for free. The only thing they need to do is basically document everything on paper and sit down and discuss this with the DA's office.