Computer system problems, which delayed payment to thousands of unemployed benefit claims during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, prevented thousands of fraudulent claims from being paid, said Labor Department Secretary Tiffany Robinson, during a hearing in Annapolis yesterday. Legislative audits gave the Dept unsatisfactory reviews, according to the Maryland Daily Record.

But Robinson said that despite being under a lot of pressure to pay all claims and sort out the real from the fraud later she is proud of how her Department worked in 2020. She attributed a number of issues to the agency’s rollout of its modernized claims system, which went online in September 2020, and added  Maryland and other states, were the target of “a wave of sophisticated digital fraud” as the pandemic hit. She addressed members of the Joint Committee on Legislative Audits on Tuesday.