Obama Overpays Unemployment Benefits By $14 Billion

Of course, to the Democrats, unemployment checks are the best economic stimulus for the buck. And they buy votes. So don't expect Obama to do anything about this.

The vast majority of unemployment benefits do go to people in need. In 2010 alone they helped keep 3.2 million Americans out of poverty, according to the Census Bureau.

But of the overpaid funds, most end up in the hands of three types of people: Those who aren’t actively searching for a job, those who were fired or quit voluntarily, and those who continue to file claims even though they’ve returned to work. Any of those circumstances would make a person ineligible for benefits.

The overpayment typically results from an administrative error made either by the government, the employer, the worker or a combination of the three.

In much rarer situations, people deliberately defraud the system, using fake documents or identities. Common scams involve prison inmates, illegal immigrants or even the deceased.

Ryan Greminger, 36, of Richmond, Ind. collected unemployment benefits while serving two years in a county jail for a drug-related crime.

“It’s not like some big scheme I thought of,” he said. Greminger had been laid off from a factory in 2007 and was originally collecting unemployment benefits legally. After he landed in jail, another inmate urged him to keep filing the claims.

“I paid this guy $50 each time to have his girlfriend — a woman I had never met — file my unemployment claims.”