Mistake doubles unemployment payments

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Thousands of unemployed New Mexicans on Monday morning accidentally received double their usual benefit payments.

"It was a human error," Department of Workforce Solutions spokesperson Carrie Moritomo told News 13.

Moritomo did not give out many details on exactly what happened.

"We transferred a file to the Bank of America, who's our fiscal agent," Moritomo said. "In that file were the payments twice, essentially."

The initial double payments went out around 6 a.m. Monday morning. By 9:30 a.m. Workforce Solutions was aware of the problem and requested to reverse the overpaid amounts.

About 9,000 direct-deposit recipients never saw the error since the money had not cleared yet. But about 23,000 unemployment debit card holders did get the double payment. The sate withdrew the overpayments to those debit cards by noon, but a chunk of those overpayments were already spent.

Those people who have already spent the money will have to repay the amount or it will be deducted from future unemployment checks.

"You should be able to keep the money," said unemployed debit card holder Richard Chavez. "They made the mistake, so you should be able to keep that extra payment."

But a lot of unemployed New Mexicans knew the overpayments were too good to be true.

"I knew it wasn't mine," Bonnie Warga said. "I'm not entitled to it, and I don't want to get into any trouble."

Meanwhile on Monday, the department proposed raising unemployment insurance taxes by $20 million to shore up its accounts, which could run out of money next year.