Can unemployment benefits be accidentally overpaid?

Overpaid Unemployment Benefits

• Answer:

  Overpaid unemployment benefits happen any time you receive payments that you aren't entitled to receive. Whether intentional or unintentional, your state labor office strives to stop benefit overpayments through careful investigation of initial claims and audits of current claims. If the state finds an overpayment on your account, you'll have to repay the money. If it was intentional, you may receive penalties, including penalty weeks, monetary fines and jail time. What is Unemployment Overpayment? Any time you receive more than your allotted share of unemployment benefits, it's an overpayment. This can happen several ways. In rare cases, there might be an error on the part of the state labor office. More often, overpayment occurs due to the claimant giving the wrong information to the labor office when they are figuring out the claim payments, whether intentional or not. Intentional vs Unintentional Unintentional overpayment of benefits can occur if you don't realize that you're giving the wrong information at the time of the claim. This might occur if you accidentally input the wages paid for the week instead of the wages earned for the week when you're filing your weekly claim. On the other hand, intentional overpayments occur when you knowingly lie, conceal income or misrepresent information to the state labor office. An example would be if you found new employment and continued to claim benefits. Another example would be if you failed to meet the eligibility requirements, such as actively seeking work, but still claimed benefits. Investigating Overpayment Cases To protect the integrity of the unemployment insurance program, your state's labor office investigates each initial claim that comes in for eligibility. They contact the former employer and review your past salary. Then, the labor office conducts random audits of accounts to verify that you're still eligible to receive benefits. Each state also has a fraud hotline where anyone who knows about unemployment overpayments can report it. Each time a situation if reported, it's investigated for any overpayment issues. Consequences If the state labor office finds out that you received an unemployment overpayment, you'll have to repay it to the state whether it was intentional or not. If the overpayment was intentional, you may also be assessed penalty weeks, which are weeks that you qualify for unemployment but, as a punishment, don't receive any payment. In some cases, you may be prosecuted for insurance fraud against the state if your overpayment was large enough or a blatant intentional act. Depending on your state's laws, you can receive monetary fines or jail time.