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Why Many Ohioans Are Not Getting Federal Unemployment Dollars Yet

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — The federal government has authorized $300 weekly unemployment bonus checks, but many Ohioans say they are not getting them yet.

FILE - In this Aug. 15, 2019 file photo Kimberly Hall, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, looks over a photo display outside her office, in Columbus, Ohio.
FILE – In this Aug. 15, 2019 file photo Kimberly Hall, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, looks over a photo display outside her office. [AP Photo | Andrew Welsh-Huggins, File]
Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Director Kim Henderson says people who have been getting unemployment benefits are seeing the $300 weekly bonuses. But she says it’s more difficult for those whose benefits had expired when the federal money was authorized.

“It is kind of not as easy as it sounds,” Henderson says.

Henderson says there are fraud controls put on this new money. Fraud has been a big problem for the agency.

Thousands of Ohioans, including Ohio’s governor and lieutenant governor, say they have been targets of fraudulent jobless claims.

There has been a lot of criticism heaped upon the agency in recent months.

In fact, Henderson says some are blaming it for the death of an unemployed man who recently committed suicide. Henderson expressed her sympathy to the family but says her team has been working day and night for the past ten months to meet the needs brought on by this pandemic.