Washington state, software firm traded blame over unemployment fraud
The Washington state attorney general's office and a Colorado software company traded letters last year in which they blamed each other for technical glitches that allowed online thieves to rapidly steal hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment insurance payouts, the Business Journal has learned.
Two top attorneys from Attorney General Bob Ferguson's office, who represent the Washington state Employment Security Department (ESD), pointed the finger at Fast Enterprises LLC, based in Denver, with offices in Boise, Idaho, in a private four-page letter dated Sept. 11, 2020.
Based on information provided by ESD, Washington state attorneys Eric Peterson and Elizabeth Lagerberg alleged that problems ESD identified with Fast Enterprises' software performance caused the state agency to incur the massive losses.
But in a five-page, point-by-point reply six days later, James Harrison, a partner from Fast Enterprises, countered that his own company's investigation into the events that preceded the massive fraud concluded that its software was free of defects.
https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2021/06/06/esd-fraud-software-vendor-fast-enterprises.html