I'm always a little suspicious of claims of benefit fraud that aren't backed up by court cases. They're very easy to inflate. Someone loses their job, fills in a form incorrectly, gets paid, the error is discovered a year later: was there really fraudulent intent, or is it just the combination of means-testing and the difficulty of discovering someone's true circumstances?
The number is mostly so large because it's 10% of an even bigger number, the amount CA pays in unemployment claims, which is not in dispute.
It is not at all comparable to Finland, and it is completely comparable to Finland
Finland via Nokia is quite high-tech in places; many people are poor; Finland unemployment system is not at all like California EDD; high-tech is available to the unemployment benefits people to implement payments, but do they use it?
Personally I care a lot about the Scandinavian lands even though I live in California. It is really interesting to me to hear comparisons of California to Finland. Both systems of government are complex and unique, so superficial comparisons certainly have a lot of hidden detail. People on YNews are uniquely capable with high tech so real inquiry here might lead to something interesting.
The US doesn’t (although by choice) and trying to prevent fraud without identity infrastructure seems hard.
The police officer handling fraud I talked to said he was getting a lot of a calls about this kind of fraud.