ID.me made “baseless” pandemic fraud claims to win contracts, Congress says

Online verification through ID.me was supposed to help the IRS prevent widespread fraud while rushing unemployment benefits to people who needed them the most.

In one case in California, it took three days for the verification to be done. The House Oversight Committee found that ID.me hid excessive wait times by only giving data related to successful connections. Technology access was not reliable enough to keep aid out of reach for those who needed it the most.

The chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform described the evidence asappalling. The chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the CoronavirusesCrisis expressed disappointment that ID.me did not deliver as a partner in US efforts to quickly disburse aid.

According to Clyburn, Congress acted quickly to ensure that 22 million newly unemployed Americans had unemployment benefits to pay their rent or mortgage and keep food on their table. In a national crisis, companies tasked with implementing critical programs must be able to serve the needs of the people they are intended to benefit. We need to make sure that companies hired to implement critical programs are up to the task.

According to the House committees' investigation, ID.me made "baseless claims" to state and federal agencies about how much fraud was taking place. The press release stated that this was an attempt to increase demand for its identity verification services.

"Despite repeated requests, ID.me could not provide the Committees with any methodology it used to support its CEO's assertion in June 2021."

The Department of Labor Office of Inspector General estimated the real figure was 10 times less than the $414 billion estimate by ID.me.

Ars was directed to a company statement and a post on Linkedin by ID.me, where Hall disagreed with the findings of the investigation.

House Oversight accused me of using a claim about fraud to win unemployment identity verification contracts.

According to Hall, ID.me was already under contract with 43 government agencies and 26 state unemployment agencies. As concerned citizens, we released our estimate to show the extent of the fraud we were seeing. The fact that 43 agencies chose ID.me before the statement was ever made doesn't make up for the fact that we made a claim about fraud.

30 states and 10 federal agencies still use ID.me's online identity verification services.