In what Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert called perhaps the biggest fraud of taxpayer dollars in California history, 35,000 unemployment claims were made on behalf of prison inmates between March and August.
Schubert stated that California has paid out at $140 million in benefits and at least 158 claims were filed for 133 inmates on death row.
Recorded phone calls at the prisons exposed the fraud as multiple inmates bragged about collecting benefits. Prosecutors said most cases involved people outside of prison filing benefits for incarcerated individuals. They added that California's Employment Development Department added to the problem by not checking unemployment claims against a list of prison inmates, as many other states do. Prosecutors sent a letter to Governor Gavin Newsome on Monday, asking him to personally intervene.
Some of the claims were filed on behalf of some of California's most infamous inmates including Scott Peterson, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and unborn son. In 2005, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection but his death penalty was overturned this past August.
Claims were also filed for Cary Stayner, convicted of killing four people in Yosemite National Park in 1999, and Susan Eubanks, who was convicted of killing her four sons in 1997.
