(ABC 6 News) – A report released Tuesday by Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) found many recipients of the state’s Frontline Worker Pay Program didn’t truly qualify to receive funds.

The $500 million program, signed into law in April 2022, gave money to those working in sectors such as healthcare, food service, public transit, manufacturing and more, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Minnesota’s Department of Revenue (DOR) and Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) were tasked with approving candidates and dividing the money equally between all eligible applicants.

Part of the requirements for eligibility were having worked in-person for at least 120 hours, and in close contact with people outside their household.

Because this is hard to verify, the DLI relied on the applicant’s word that they fit those criteria. However, the OLA has stricter verification requirements. For its audit, the OLA called the employers of as many recipients as possible to confirm they told they truth.

85% of people who applied were deemed eligible by the DLI to receive payments. That’s just over 1 million people. However, the OLA could only verify 60% of those recipients as qualifying for the program.

Most shockingly, the audit found 21 recipients had died before applying, indicating fraud. Auditors say this fraud could easily have been prevented by simply checking death records.

“If people want to commit fraud, and they want to collude, it’s really hard to catch that honestly, but what state agencies need to do is put the controls in place to make that as hard as possible,” said Legislative Auditor Judy Randall. “I don’t think any of us expect it to be totally 100% perfect, but I think we expect it to be better than what it was.”

Randall says the people most hurt by these mismanaged funds are the truly eligible applicants. Those individuals received less money than they should have, as they essentially shared it with those who shouldn’t have gotten it in the first place.

The OLA is recommending the state recover payments from ineligible recipients and press charges against those it found committed fraud.

ABC 6 was not able to reach the DOR or DLI for comment.