Steve Gray, director of the University of Michigan law school’s unemployment insurance clinic, told the Guardian earlier this year that he routinely came across claimants facing a significant emotional toll. As a result, he said, the clinic added the number for a suicide hotline to a referral resource page on the program’s website.
“We had just a number of clients who were so desperate, saying that they were going to lose their house … they’ve never been unemployed before, they didn’t know,” said Gray, who filed a complaint with the US labor department in 2015 about the Midas system.
The fines can be enormous. Residents interviewed by local news outlets have highlighted fraud penalties from the UIA upwards of $100,000. Bankruptcy petitions filed as a result of unemployment insurance fraud also increased during the timeframe when Midas was in use.
