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What the auditors found
The Illinois Auditor General is the legislature's own watchdog. These are official findings, not accusations, and an audit finding is not a crime. Most state programs do what they are supposed to, and most people who work in them are honest. This is about how the money is managed and checked.
| Amount | Finding | Source |
|---|---|---|
| $5.24 billion | $5.24 billion in unemployment overpaid (2020-2022). From 2019 to 2022, the state unemployment agency reported $5.24 billion in overpayments. Auditors say that total mixes honest mistakes with fraud and identity theft; $3.20 billion of it came through the federal pandemic program. To pay claims faster, some routine identity checks were suspended. | Illinois Auditor General, July 26, 2023 |
| $40.5 million | Jobless checks sent to prison inmates (2020-2022). The state unemployment agency sent 92,811 payments to 3,448 people who were in prison or jail at the time, and not eligible. | Illinois Auditor General, July 2023 |
| $6.0 million | Unemployment paid to dead people (2020-2022). Auditors found 481 people who had already died received 10,527 unemployment payments. Some had already been flagged as fraud. | Illinois Auditor General, July 2023 |
| $78.5 million | $78.5 million for workers on standby (2022-2023). The state emergency agency paid a staffing company $78.5 million for about 470,000 hours when contract workers were on standby, not working, out of $220.3 million the company billed. | Illinois Auditor General, Aug 11, 2026 |
| $2.8 million+ | State workers took pandemic loans falsely (2020-2021). The state's ethics watchdog found state employees got federal pandemic small-business loans using false information, mostly around $20,000 each. Of 501 cases it finished, it found wrongdoing in 378, and more than 200 workers were fired or resigned. | Office of Executive Inspector General |
| $23 million found, $1.26 million back | Overpayments found, barely collected (2024). Medicaid insurance companies found $23 million in overpayments to health care providers in one year, but only $1.26 million was recovered. Under their state contracts, the insurers keep what they recover. | HFS Inspector General, FY2024 annual report |
| $3.42 million | Relief grants to ineligible businesses (2020-2021). The state's pandemic small business grant program paid 196 businesses that did not qualify based on their own applications. Applicants were allowed to vouch for themselves with no checking. | Illinois Auditor General, May 2023 |
| $1.19 million | Kids' health plan covered adults (2018-2020). Auditors found 1,328 people still on the state's children's health plan after they turned 19, too old to qualify. The plan paid for 11,011 of their services. A quarter of the yearly eligibility checks due in one year were never done. | Illinois Auditor General, 2023 |
| $1.6 billion | Immigrant health programs cost far more than estimated (2020-2024). Two state-funded programs for noncitizen adults and seniors, including legal residents not eligible for Medicaid, cost $1.6 billion through summer 2024. The seniors program was projected at $2 million to $4 million in its first year; its three-year cost was $412 million. Auditors also found 6,098 people enrolled as undocumented who had Social Security numbers. The adults program ended July 1, 2025; the seniors program continues. | Illinois Auditor General, Feb 2025; Capitol News Illinois; HFS |
Official Illinois Auditor General and Inspector General reports. Status as of September 2026.
Proven in court
Our Follow the Money game holds 41 Illinois cases that ended in a conviction or a guilty plea, worth about $145 million together: unemployment and pandemic-loan schemes, Medicaid and food-aid fraud, and public officials who took bribes or stole from the public, from Chicago to small towns downstate. Each one is listed with its court or prosecutor source on the game's page. See every case.
See waste or fraud in state government? Report it to the Illinois Office of Executive Inspector General.
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