Arizona DES freezes 43,000 unemployment accounts

Accounts all flagged as potentially fraudulent

PHOENIX, Ariz. (KYMA, KECY) - Tens of thousands of Arizona unemployment accounts are now frozen. The Department of Economic Security (DES) says all of them may be fraudulent.

This is the second time this year the state has frozen jobless payments to weed out fraud. In July, DES closed 28,000 suspicious accounts. Out of those, investigators found only 3,800 were legitimate.

The agency ultimately sent those residents their back payments and restored their benefits.

The DES says it expects to find a low number of legitimate accounts during this freeze as well.