Senate Bill No. 1219 proposes to increase the financial threshold for classifying unemployment compensation fraud from $500 to $2,000. Under the current law, individuals who knowingly make false statements or fail to disclose material facts to obtain or alter unemployment benefits face a class A misdemeanor if the fraudulent amount is $500 or less, and a class D felony if it exceeds $500. The bill modifies this classification, establishing that amounts of $2,000 or less will be considered a class A misdemeanor, while amounts exceeding $2,000 will be classified as a class D felony.

The bill also makes minor adjustments to the language used in the statute, changing references from "himself or herself" to "such person" and from "his or her" to "such person's." The effective date for these changes is set for October 1, 2025. The fiscal impact of this bill is expected to be negligible, as it is anticipated that the modification will not significantly increase the workload for enforcement, given the rarity of such cases in the past two decades.