AUGUSTA — Unemployment fraud is worse than many believe, and the state Department of Labor will be getting ready to implement a new law to cut down on fraud within the week, according to Labor Commissioner Robert Winglass.

He said he thinks there are more people abusing the system than are credited “and we will soon determine if that is true or not.”

Winglass said in an interview that the department has been working hard to identify those who may be cheating the unemployment insurance system and that the new measure signed by Gov. Paul LePage on Wednesday provides more tools to combat fraud.

“We haven’t just been sitting back and waiting; we have been on the march here, if you will, towards identifying individuals who have been violating the system big time,” he said.

The legislation takes effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns. One key provision spells out that the criminal offense of theft by deception applies to unemployment fraud by a worker or an employer. Winglass said the department has been prosecuting the cases where it is clear a person intended to cheat the system.

“I think you are going to see more of those in the next few weeks,” he said.

LePage praised passage of the bill because it is projected to result in savings to the Unemployment Trust Fund, which pays unemployment benefits. It gets its cash from a tax on employers.

“Our limited resources must be used wisely,” LePage said. He said the state’s management of the fund has been exemplary and pointed out that Maine was the only state in New England that did not have to borrow from the federal government to provide unemployment compensation in the recent recession.

“Maine’s job creators need to use their resources to invest in growth and expansion to provide good-paying jobs for Mainers,” LePage said.

But Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO, said there is not a major problem with fraud in Maine’s unemployment system. He said Maine is ranked fifth lowest in the country for unemployment fraud.

“Should we try to get rid of what little fraud we have? Of course we should,” he said. “But we should be focusing the major effort on how to find the 100,000 Mainers that want a job, a job to go to every day. That should be the focus, not fraud that really is not a problem.”

Schlobohm said it’s discouraging that LePage decided to focus efforts on the “non-problem” of fraud while not proposing legislation that will help create jobs.

“We have large-scale unemployment and under-employment and this administration has seen fit not to use the tools that it has to help those Mainers get a job,” he said. “That’s where we need to focus, not on a fraud problem that is so small it’s really hard to call it a problem.”

He said he’s concerned resources that could go to creating jobs will instead go to finding the few cases of fraud that have not been found.

Sen. Chris Rector, R-Thomaston, the co-chairman of the Labor, Commerce, Research and Economic Development Committee, who sponsored the measure, said the labor department has been doing a good job going after both fraud and errors in the system.

“Our goal is to make sure that everyone who that is entitled to benefits are receiving benefits and anyone who is not entitled to benefits are not receiving benefits — plain and simple,” he said.

Rector said he wants to root out what fraud exists because it drives up the cost of unemployment taxes for employers. He said many still do not realize that the entire cost of the system is paid by employers in Maine, unlike some other states.