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Colorado woman spends 11 days on hold with unemployment trying to get benefits

Lisa Craig lost her job in May. She still hasn't been able to get any unemployment.

THORNTON, Colo. — 278 hours.

That's how long Lisa Craig has spent on hold waiting for answers about her Colorado unemployment.

She lost her job in May -- and still hasn't seen a cent of the unemployment she said the state owes her. 

"I can't even imagine a reason that this should be happening," Craig said. "Every week nothing happens. And then every week less money is in the bank to pay your bills."

She's not alone. For months, 9NEWS has covered stories of people like Craig who the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment have left in limbo after starting a new fraud detection system. 

RELATED: Coloradans helped report unemployment fraud...now, they can't get their real unemployment benefits

RELATED: Colorado tried to weed out unemployment fraud and caught thousands of real claims in the process

Craig said she has spoken to a CDLE customer service representative only about five times, despite all the hours on hold. She said they've told her someone fraudulently filed a claim using her account three years ago. 

Now, she said, she's stuck on a "program integrity hold" -- with no understanding of how to remedy it. 

"It is absolutely ridiculous," she said. "At this point it feels like I’ve been doing this a lifetime." 

The director of Colorado's Division of Unemployment Insurance said the agency is looking into Craig's case. 

"Our commitment to address this issue is seeing improvement," Philip Spesshardt said. "From April through October, there’s roughly 150 low-risk, active claims that have taken longer than four weeks to investigate." 

It is not clear whether Craig's case is included in the low-risk, active claims Spesshardt referenced. 

He said CDLE has moved resources around to help claimants' experience and given additional training to call center representatives "to quickly identify program integrity (PI) holds and send them to newly trained workers for review." 

"We anticipate most PI issues to be cleared within a week of claimants contacting us unless there are risk factors that require additional investigation," he said. 

"These recent adjustments have rebalanced and stabilized the system to work as originally anticipated, allowing us to stop identity theft claims in their tracks while trying to minimize the impact to innocent victims of identity theft." 

But Craig said she has extinguished her savings and had to dip into her retirement accounts to pay her monthly bills. 

"I just don’t know what else to do anymore," she said. "Enough is enough."

In its statement, CDLE also said: "Claimants who aren’t getting their payments or believe they mistakenly have a PI hold on their account are encouraged to reach out to our call center at 303-318-9000, or visit our downtown office, as we are continuing to prioritize those claims. Walk-ins are available daily from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. at 621 17th Street, Suite 100, Denver, CO, 80202, our new office lobby."

From July: State may have withheld unemployment benefits from thousands of legitimate applicants

From July: Identity thieves make up 1/3 of new Colorado unemployment claims

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