HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry (L&I) announced on Monday that it has resolved over 26,000 pandemic-era fraud reports in the first six months of Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration.

“When fraudsters targeted UC systems nationwide, they may have expected easy money. But this Department fought back by implementing new security measures and working with our partners in law enforcement to hold fraudsters accountable,” L&I Secretary Nancy A. Walker said. “Every report of suspected fraud deserves to be investigated, and that’s what we’ll do until this workload is resolved.”

The department stated that it had resolved more than three-quarters of the approximately 34,000 reports that remained. The department stated that by the end of June, the number of outstanding fraud reports was down to 7,863.

As of Monday, the department continues to resolve the pandemic backlog of claims and has resolved more than 8,000 pandemic claims since April.

The department received nearly 3.7 million regular claims and 3.4 million Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims between March 2020 and November 2021. The department states that the backlog of unresolved pandemic claims totaled 4,659 at the end of June 2023. This is down more than 8,000 since April, according to L&I.