the I-Team reported on IDES errors<\/a> because of an outdated system, backlogs, massive overpayments, and even scam artists who were trying to take advantage of the confusion. In many cases federal overpayments, to people like Jackson who say they were *not gaming the system, were forgiven. The acting director of IDES at the time, Kristin Richards, addressed the issue.<\/p>\n“We’re working with federal partners to develop a process for how those individuals may request a waiver,” Richards said at the time.<\/p>\n
New data from obtained by the I-Team from IDES shows that from 2020-2024 the state had more than 485,000 overpayment cases, totaling almost $1.6 billion. Of that number, more than $106 million dollars were recovered. More than 65 million dollars were waived or forgiven .<\/p>\n
IDES would not comment on Jackson’s case, saying “we cannot share details of individual claimants.”<\/p>\n
In its response to Jackson’s lawsuit, IDES did not argue the case but through its legal counsel, the Illinois Attorney General, IDES said the decision should stand based on the records and ineligible payments Jackson received. The Illinois AG also said in a filing that the court should uphold the state Board of Review’s decision to dismiss an appeal by Jackson, because she filed 12 days too late, but a judge recently disagreed.<\/p>\n
“So yeah, that means a lot and it means a lot to me that the judge ruled in the appeal process in my favor because he saw the evidence,” Jackson said.<\/p>\n
Now, Jackson has the green light to go through that appeal process and try to get that overpayment forgiven.<\/p>\n
“I still have to fight, however,” Jackson said. “This is big because I won the right to go back to IDES and say, ‘No, you are wrong, not me.’ That is what is big about this.”<\/p>\n
Jackson says she will continue her fight to not pay that money back. She says she feels this process is also about clearing her name, saying she did not commit unemployment fraud.<\/p>\n
Anyone being accused of fraud should not ignore the notices, and ask for evidence.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (WLS) — A local woman fighting unemployment fraud accusations turned to the ABC7 I-Team about her lawsuit…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":797846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[325310,960,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-797845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-325310","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116577849016959228","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}