LOCKED OUT: Unemployed Floridians losing benefits over ID verification

If you’re on unemployment and have been locked out of your account, you’re not alone.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity says when claimants verify their identity through ID.ME (a company the state says it partners with for people to make their claims), the department’s fraud prevention system has been re-locking their claims.

The DEO says the system should be automatically unlocking claims now, but that it can take 24 to 48 hours to do so.

When Jerry Cutaia’s friend’s wife died of COVID-19 last year, he knew he had to do something. He packed up and moved to Florida to help his friend care for his daughter, and he got a job. But that job came to an end as Cutaia’s high-risk condition meant he had to stay home and go on unemployment during the pandemic.

“People rely on this money to pay their bills and survive,” Cutaia said. Everything was going fine until last Tuesday when Cutaia logged into his ID.ME account and was asked to verify his identity -- he did so and has been locked out ever since.

Cutaia says he then re-verified his identity a total of 84 times over the next seven days -- with no help in sight.

He was finally got through to someone on ID.ME’s Facebook page and was then let back into his account but said the service needs to come up with a better way of communicating with its claimants.

“If [they] would’ve warned me, at least I could’ve gotten ahead of the game and started working on it, now it’s time to pay bills and it’s locked,” Cutaia said.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity shared a statement with Action News Jax about the issue:

“The Department is aware of an issue where some claims are being re-locked in CONNECT after their identity has been verified through ID.me. We are working diligently to resolve the issue and unlock claims that have been re-locked. The Department continuously unlocks claims through an automated process after claimants have been verified with ID.me. For existing claimants who have verified their identity and continue to have their claims re-locked, they should allow at least 24-48 hours for the claim to be unlocked.”

Cox Media Group