According to a report by the California state auditor, 38 million pieces of mail from the Employment Development Department (EDD) went out with people’s Social Security numbers on them, putting them at a dangerous risk of identity theft.
"EDD must take swift action to end its potentially harmful practice and better safeguard the identities of the residents it serves,” State Auditor Elaine Howle wrote to Governor Newsom and the Legislature.
After discovering the Social Security numbers on 13 million pieces of mail in March of 2019, Howle’s team notified EED and asked them to stop the practice. But the team alleges as of today, the agency has not stopped. Howle says she believes the number of pieces of mail could be even higher than 38 million.
Even more frightening, over the last eight months, people have reported receiving mail not addressed with them, “Such mailings may be linked to attempts to fraudulently collect unemployment benefits,” the audit found.
A San Francisco school bus driver Michelle Panganiban told KTVU in September that she got nearly one hundred letters from the EDD sent to her address, but none of them were addressed to her. She says the return addresses were from various EDD offices throughout the state and some even felt like they had EDD debit cards inside.
"I'm sure they have a machine that is printing and stuffing, but there's nothing in their system that says hey, 100 are going to one lady? That doesn't make any sense," said Panganiban.