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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>美国银行长期蓬勃发展的加州合作伙伴关系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州等州发放失业救济金将是一笔好生意。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>该银行是加州失业计划的长期中间人,将失业救济金存入预付借记卡。通常情况下,这项任务是平凡的,但随着去年的疫情,情况发生了变化。申请失业救济人数激增,相关欺诈行为也激增。</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,国家和银行切断了数十万受益人的福利。许多人是失业的加州人,提出了合法的要求,他们很快就在社交媒体上或致电州议员抱怨政府和银行。美国银行希望停止向加州分配福利,但该州拒绝了,将两者锁定在一个不稳定的联盟中。</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>联邦政府去年迅速应对冠状病毒大流行,提高了失业救济金,并向通常不符合资格的工人提供这些救济金。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上笨手笨脚。一些多付的福利;其他人很难接触到合适的人。</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,为下岗工人提供通过直接存款获得福利的选择。美国银行尽管仍然是加州的提供商,但最近退出了其发放失业救济金的大多数州的协议。</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>银行发言人表示:“这场大流行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状况。”“尽管如此,我们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适当服务。”</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)发放了超过800万张卡,福利超过1000亿美元。州审计人员称,骗子从该项目中窃取了数十亿美元。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>1月份的一份州审计报告称,根据EDD自己的估计,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1700份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150万份申请进行审查。它最终取消了其中大约一半的人的资格。此外,该银行还冻结了约45万张卡,其中大部分是在国家机构的指导下。许多合法领取者愤怒地发现他们的每周福利已经停止。</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>在一份声明中,EDD发言人将欺诈行为的激增归因于“老练的骗子坐拥被盗个人身份信息宝库”,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和美银看涨期权中心之间摇摆不定。那些访问银行分行的人发现,出纳员只能最低限度地访问管理卡的系统。EDD的电话线非常繁忙,以至于一些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(Jackie Carey)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,骗子利用她的凭证在附近的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。在一个半月的时间里,她无法取用卡上大约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向她发放失业救济金,这样她就可以继续每周领取救济金。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>美国银行周一在一份声明中表示,其“首要目标始终是确保合法受益人能够获得福利。”该银行还表示,已“承诺采取额外措施,帮助遭受欺诈的失业救济金尽快领取救济金。”</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。根据标准普尔全球市场情报公司的数据,其五分之一的分支机构都在那里。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Refinitiv称,该银行在过去十年中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年左右开始通过预付借记卡提供失业救济金时,美国银行是一个天然的合作伙伴。当时,信用卡是接触没有银行账户的人的一种新颖方式。摩根大通公司的预付卡被用来为2005年卡特里娜飓风的受害者提供福利,通常从收容流离失所者的会议中心和体育场分发。</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,美国银行会向商户收取费用,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1,470万美元的收入。加州收入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。美国银行在致立法者的一封信中表示,该计划在过去10年中只有一年实现盈利。该银行表示,在加强看涨期权中心员工并在欺诈预防方面投入更多资金后,去年损失了约1.78亿美元,远远超过以往任何一年。</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>凯里女士加入的集体诉讼称,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,该州要求磁条卡,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,它告诉该州,当其合同今年续签时,它希望停止管理该计划。EDD发言人表示,该州行使了将合同再续签两年的权利,“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,该银行已建议加州“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>美国银行长期蓬勃发展的加州合作伙伴关系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>美国银行长期蓬勃发展的加州合作伙伴关系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州等州发放失业救济金将是一笔好生意。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>该银行是加州失业计划的长期中间人,将失业救济金存入预付借记卡。通常情况下,这项任务是平凡的,但随着去年的疫情,情况发生了变化。申请失业救济人数激增,相关欺诈行为也激增。</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,国家和银行切断了数十万受益人的福利。许多人是失业的加州人,提出了合法的要求,他们很快就在社交媒体上或致电州议员抱怨政府和银行。美国银行希望停止向加州分配福利,但该州拒绝了,将两者锁定在一个不稳定的联盟中。</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>联邦政府去年迅速应对冠状病毒大流行,提高了失业救济金,并向通常不符合资格的工人提供这些救济金。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上笨手笨脚。一些多付的福利;其他人很难接触到合适的人。</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,为下岗工人提供通过直接存款获得福利的选择。美国银行尽管仍然是加州的提供商,但最近退出了其发放失业救济金的大多数州的协议。</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>银行发言人表示:“这场大流行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状况。”“尽管如此,我们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适当服务。”</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)发放了超过800万张卡,福利超过1000亿美元。州审计人员称,骗子从该项目中窃取了数十亿美元。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>1月份的一份州审计报告称,根据EDD自己的估计,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1700份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150万份申请进行审查。它最终取消了其中大约一半的人的资格。此外,该银行还冻结了约45万张卡,其中大部分是在国家机构的指导下。许多合法领取者愤怒地发现他们的每周福利已经停止。</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>在一份声明中,EDD发言人将欺诈行为的激增归因于“老练的骗子坐拥被盗个人身份信息宝库”,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和美银看涨期权中心之间摇摆不定。那些访问银行分行的人发现,出纳员只能最低限度地访问管理卡的系统。EDD的电话线非常繁忙,以至于一些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(Jackie Carey)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,骗子利用她的凭证在附近的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。在一个半月的时间里,她无法取用卡上大约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向她发放失业救济金,这样她就可以继续每周领取救济金。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>美国银行周一在一份声明中表示,其“首要目标始终是确保合法受益人能够获得福利。”该银行还表示,已“承诺采取额外措施,帮助遭受欺诈的失业救济金尽快领取救济金。”</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。根据标准普尔全球市场情报公司的数据,其五分之一的分支机构都在那里。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Refinitiv称,该银行在过去十年中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年左右开始通过预付借记卡提供失业救济金时,美国银行是一个天然的合作伙伴。当时,信用卡是接触没有银行账户的人的一种新颖方式。摩根大通公司的预付卡被用来为2005年卡特里娜飓风的受害者提供福利,通常从收容流离失所者的会议中心和体育场分发。</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,美国银行会向商户收取费用,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1,470万美元的收入。加州收入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。美国银行在致立法者的一封信中表示,该计划在过去10年中只有一年实现盈利。该银行表示,在加强看涨期权中心员工并在欺诈预防方面投入更多资金后,去年损失了约1.78亿美元,远远超过以往任何一年。</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>凯里女士加入的集体诉讼称,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,该州要求磁条卡,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,它告诉该州,当其合同今年续签时,它希望停止管理该计划。EDD发言人表示,该州行使了将合同再续签两年的权利,“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,该银行已建议加州“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":425,"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/859479810"}
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