In our spotlight on Business Report tonight, the state's Division of Taxation announced that it blocked 900,000 attempts of fraud related to the state's anchor property tax relief program.

Well, that's led to the state ramping up ID requirements for all of you who are trying to apply to the program now.

Our budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer is here to explain what happened and what it means for you.

John, great to see you in the studio.

How are these fraudulent applications caught?

What do we know?

Well, we know that the you know, all of the numbers with anchor are big.

So first off, we should probably note that this is a program that is funded with more than $2 billion out of the state budget.

So, unfortunately, just as we saw during the worst of the pandemic with things like unemployment insurance, when the numbers get big, that brings out the fraudsters.

And I guess that's what we're seeing here.

Now as anchor starts to mature.

It was created a few years ago and now it's become the state's biggest direct property tax relief program.

What the Treasury and Treasury's taxation division does is they compare the information that someone would put on an application with existing property and tax records.

So right there there's a big check because this is the agency that actually collects all of these types of records with people's paying of taxes every year.

So that's one layer.

And then this year they've debuted this this new process, which involves a company called ID Me, which the state's using as another layer of verification of someone's identity just to make sure that people, when they are applying, they are actually eligible.

I want to get into that idea in me in a little bit.

But do you know just a state now if these fraudulent applications were done by individuals kind of gaming the system or was this part of a broader fraud scheme?

You know, I think that's a really good question.

We don't have that level of detail in what's been made public about this.

And we should also say that there are attempts to collect benefits fraudulently.

And then alerts have also been issued about scams targeting people seeking anchor benefits.

And so someone might be sending a text or an email seeking to get your personal information that would be used for obtaining an anchor benefit that they then will be able to use to steal your identity.

So alerts have also been issued warning people to be on the lookout if somebody is emailing you or texting you, the state does not do that.

So we don't have that exact level of detail, but we know that there have also been those warnings about looking out for scams as well.

Does the state catching these fraudulent attempts this year indicate that perhaps there were there are concerns of fraud in the programs in the past?

You know, we hear a lot these days about fraud across the across a number of different programs.

And it's no surprise that anchor would be added into this because technology is advancing in ways where people are being able to do things like spoofing and take advantage of different levels of technology.

So again, the program's fairly new.

The numbers are getting very big.

And I think you see the confluence of a lot of these different factors that's bringing out the fraudsters and then probably reassuring, seeing the state respond in the way that it has by ramping up some of these identifier or identity verification measures.

I'm just curious that you say 900,000 attempts isn't a whole lot when it's a $2 billion program, but what could that have cost the state?

Well, the the anchor benefits the max.

The maximum benefit is 1750 per recipient or households.

And you can.

Start doing the math there.

Yeah, absolutely.

What should folks have on hand to prove their identity when they applied this year?

Well, the best thing, I mean, for one and a half million people, the applications have been submitted automatically.

Then there's a whole checklist.

If you got material that Treasury would have sent last month.

So to have all of the items, a lot of it's in your tax form.

So if you have an old tax form, this goes back to the 2021 tax year.

So if you have that information, that's the golden ticket for a lot of this benefit application materials.

So for those of us, for those watching who are trying to apply this year, just do the right thing, provide your information, should be all good.

Yes, absolutely.

And for a lot of people, it's done automatically.

You just let it you know, the benefits roll out in November, so you just wait to get your money.

All right.

We will be waiting.

Budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer.

Good to see you, John.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

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