[Column] Amid the strengthening of crackdowns on illegal receipt of unemployment benefits, the importance of systematic explanation

Recently, the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced the basic plan to investigate illegal receipt of employment insurance for 2026 and began a large-scale special inspection on illegal receipt of unemployment benefits. In the past, if you only returned the amount you received illegally, you might be treated leniently or let things go quietly, but now the situation has completely changed.

When caught, it has become difficult to avoid not only punitive additional collection of up to five times the amount of illegal benefits, but also heavy criminal punishment. Due to a moment of wrong judgment, they were left with a huge amount of debt and faced an irreversible crisis.

According to Article 116 of the current Employment Insurance Act, anyone who receives unemployment benefits by false or other fraudulent means is subject to imprisonment for up to 3 years or a fine of up to 30 million won. If a crime is committed in collusion with a business owner, the offender will be punished with imprisonment of up to 5 years or a fine of up to 50 million won.

Hiding the fact of re-employment after leaving the company or income from part-time work, as well as false proof of job-seeking activities, are all clearly illegal, and depending on the intentionality of the case and the scale of the damage, the possibility of being charged with fraud and being sentenced to prison cannot be ruled out.

In order to prevent criminal punishment and excessive punitive recovery, a clear defense strategy is essential from the early stages of the investigation. Bluntly denying or making excuses for the charges will only be seen as an attempt to conceal the crime from investigative agencies and provide an excuse for aggravated punishment.

Rather, you must acknowledge the facts, actively cooperate with the investigation, and objectively prove that there was no malicious intent to defraud by explaining that the act was accidental and unavoidable. In addition, prompt return of the illegally received funds in full and a sincere attitude of remorse are key requirements for eliciting leniency.

No matter how severe the punishment is expected, if you go through this systematic explanation process, you can prevent the worst outcome. In fact, one case in which the author personally acted as the defense attorney and led to a non-indictment is a representative example. Client A received a total of 12 million won in unemployment benefits over 6 months. However, even though he was re-employed only two months after leaving the company, he submitted a false unemployment certificate to the employment center, and the approximately 8.5 million won he received after re-employment was caught as illegal, putting him at risk of receiving heavy criminal punishment.

The author focused on proving that Mr. A did not have malicious and deliberate intent to defraud. The extenuating circumstances of Mr. A's health difficulties and extreme economic hardship at the time were summarized as objective data and submitted to the investigative agency.

In addition, Mr. A strongly expressed that he was deeply reflecting on all his crimes and was actively cooperating with the investigation, and most importantly, he quickly and voluntarily returned the entire amount of money he had illegally received. Accordingly, the prosecution decided not to indict, accepting the defense's arguments, including Mr. A's sincere attitude of remorse and the fact that the full amount of his benefits was returned, and Mr. A was able to safely avoid imprisonment and return to his daily life.

In cases of illegal receipt of unemployment benefits, the outcome varies greatly depending on how the initial golden time before attendance at the Labor Office and police investigation is spent. Rather than reacting hastily out of embarrassment, the wisest solution to get out of a crisis is to collect evidence based on the facts and systematically explain the situation with the help of a legal expert with extensive experience in criminal cases from the beginning of the case.

Lawyer at Daeryun Woojin Law Firm (Limited)

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[Column] Amid strengthening crackdown on illegal receipt of unemployment benefits, importance of systematic explanation (link)