Hey, guys, it's Ginny Silver today.
I want to talk to those of you who are
being hit with an overpayment from the California Edd.
Many of you are wondering, what
exactly is the overpayment penalty?
What happens if you do not respond
or do not pay the Ed Edd?
And can an Edd overpayment affect other areas
such as your work, immigration status, wages, etc.
To get expert information, I have spoken with
Asaf Latosh from Pershing Square Law Firm.
This video is sponsored by Pershing Square Law Firm.
Pershing Square Law Firm is California's first and
the only law firm dedicated to Edd law.
They represent clients in appealing any kind of
adverse decision made by the Edd, whether it
is a denial of benefits overpayments procedural or
computational issues with your claim.
They represent claimants undergoing
any of these issues.
In the eight years they have been in
business, they have maintained an A Plus rating
and accreditation from the Better Business Bureau.
They offer a flat rate fee and do not operate
on percentages, so claimants keep almost all of their benefits.
Pershing Square Law firm understands that their clients
are undergoing financial hardship and therefore their pricing
is intended to be very accessible to most
people, even those undergoing such financial hardship.
Lastly, they offer a complimentary consultation, and anyone
facing legal issues with the Edd can call
into Pershing Square Law Firm and receive helpful
information and get questions answered directly from an
attorney through a free consultation.
Click on the link in the video description.
In order to contact Pershing Square Law Firm, I
think that many people are facing over payments.
They may in fact have
actually provided a false statement.
They may have knowingly or
unknowingly entered something incorrectly.
They may have repercussions now that they have to
pay benefits back and they are subject to those
over payments and they won't be waived.
What is the worst case scenario for this?
How far does this stretch?
Because many clients are worried not only about monetary concerns,
but what happens if they don't pay it back?
How bad can the penalties be?
Can it affect things like their immigration status?
Can they have jail time required of them?
How far can this actually go?
Worst case scenario, unfortunately, can be
really, really bad, but it's rare.
Of all the people we've dealt with and we've
dealt with literally thousands of people over the course
of the pandemic, I've not seen a single case
and there have been so many overpayments.
I have not seen a single case where
someone ended up with any kind of legal
action taken against them for fraud or some
criminal allegations or anything of that sort.
So I think that is one thing to take
into consideration to put it into proportion, but it
is a serious matter because there are consequences to
providing false information to the Edd or omitting important
information that's causing them to pay your benefits you're
not supposed to receive.
I think primarily the consequences are financial.
You're going to have to pay back this money.
You're going to have to pay a 30% penalty.
You can pretty much forget about
unemployment for the foreseeable future.
There's, like I said, the 15 week penalty that's
probably going to stay there for three years.
So if you want to file for benefits
again in the next three years, you're going
to have to wait for those 15 weeks.
I think the worst part of it is that the
Edd is very aggressive in collecting money from people.
They will levy your bank account, they will
garnish your wages, they'll take away your tax
return money, they'll take away your lottery winnings.
They'll pretty much find every way
possible to get that money back.
But that's not even the worst part.
The worst part is that if you don't pay because
the interest is so high, it's a self perpetuating debt.
So I've seen people who from year to year
just let the EDD take away their tax return.
But by the time they've reached the next
tax return season, the amount they've already paid
has been replenished by the interest.
So they're just in this endless cycle where they just
give up their tax return in perpetuity to the Edd.
So I don't know if it's set up to be
this way, but it's completely crazy and evil if you
ask me key people in this perpetual payment posture.
But I think the takeaway is you don't want to
put yourself in this position and you want to use
every tool you have available to you if you find
yourself in this position to get out, the best thing
you can do is, of course, appeal as quickly as
possible and not let the sitting there.
I think another way that you could sort of
manage the situation is even if you have an
overpayment that you disagree with unless you're filing a
timely appeal, which should be resolved within a few
weeks, just pay off as much as you can
or find someone else to owe the money to.
Because the interest is a killer, it will literally keep
you owing money to them for a very long time,
or you might end up with double the amount if
you just let it sit there for years.
So the fee and then I believe you
said 10% interest, 10% per year interest?
Yes, on top of everything.
So 10% goes to the principal and for the penalty.
So does the Edd ever assess
the overpayment and require that.
But waive the penalty or the interest?
I've never seen them waive interest before.
That's never happened, but I have seen them do is
they're not going to waive the penalty, but you can
fight the penalty by appealing the false statement.
So just because you are overpaid
doesn't mean that you shouldn't appeal.
It's possible that you'll find yourself in a
situation where you agree with the overpayment, but
you don't agree with the false statement appeal,
because if you get rid of the false
statement, three things are going to happen.
Number one, you'll get rid of the penalty.
Number two, you will get rid of whatever weeks
of unemployment benefits they took away from you, which
you can use to offset your overpayment.
And number three, it will cause the debt
to be subject to a statute of limitations.
Not so when you have a false statement, if you
have a false statement, it can go on in perpetuity.
And if you remove the false
statement, there is such limitations.
I believe it's one year, and if the ID doesn't
go to court and get a judgment against you in
that one year, then you are off the hook and
you should be able to remove it.
The problem is that removing
it requires following an appeal.
And if you're going to file an appeal after one
year, it's not going to be a timely appeal.
Obviously, the better thing to do is just
to file an appeal as quickly as possible.
But if you find yourself in a situation where you're
dealing with an older overpayment and doesn't have a false
statement, you can file an appeal to get rid of
it through such limitations, and you definitely have a strong
incentive to fight the false statement to get rid of
the penalties and the statute of limitation to be applied
to the debt itself.
So how could this potentially affect immigration status and
any other factors that could be affected by this?
So false statement could potentially affect
your immigration status and could affect
if your application for a job.
If the job requires you to have some kind of
a background check, like, for example, federal jobs, jobs as
a police officer, as a teacher thing where you're entrusted
with, let's say, the safety of other people.
One example, when you apply for an immigration status
in the United States, one of the questions that
are posed to you is whether or not you
have provided false information to a government entity.
And if you have a false statement against you
by the Ed that you've not reversed, if you
are going to answer truthfully, the answer will have
to be yes, that might complicate things for you.
So you want to take that into consideration.
With that being said, it's not necessarily going to
trigger any flags or any kind of action with
the immigration authorities in the United States.
They're not necessarily talking to each other, but you have
to keep in mind that this is all public record
and this is all part of the government's system, and
this might be accessible to them in the future.
And providing false information on your immigration
application is not a good idea.
So the best thing you could do is if you
are going through or plan to go through an immigration
process and you are subject to a false statement, find
it as quickly as you can with regard to your
application for two different kinds of jobs.
We've seen police officers, people who are looking
for some kind of an advancement through a
government system and teachers could have been potentially
affected by false statement unless they had gone
through and appeal and reversed it.
When you go through the process of being
hired for one of these positions, you may
be posed a question about whether you ever
provided false information to a government entity.
And again, your answer would have to be yes.
So now what about an accidental false statement?
Does that exist?
Will Edd qualify something as a false
statement if it was submitted accidentally?
If someone either didn't know the
full extent of their information?
For example, if a claimant is filling out their
unemployment application back in 2020, they were selfemployed.
They may not have known their exact net
income because they didn't have careful record keeping.
Perhaps they didn't file taxes if they
submitted that information and realized later on
that it was not correct.
Would that be a false statement? What?
That is an excellent question.
But the answer is if you should have known
or through the exercise of ordinary caution and diligence,
could have provided the right and complete information to
the Edd, even though it didn't happen intentionally.
But through just your extraordinary negligence, right?
Gross negligence, not ordinary negligence,
something that is beyond.
Let me give you an example.
A lot of overpayments occur when people fail
to report accurate information about their earnings, and
then they have this situation where they've received
benefits and wages at the same time.
So we've come across a situation where a
person did report, but they reported inaccurately.
They just gave a kind of sort of estimate of
how much money they were making at the hearing.
The judge asks them, Why didn't you just
report what you saw on your pay stub?
And they said, well, you know, I didn't
know some basically explanation that implies ordinary negligence,
but the judge wouldn't have it.
And she determined because the person had pay stubs.
And because question number six specifically asked, Did you
earn any money whether you repeat or not?
And then it gives them a specific request to
enter an accurate amount of earnings, and they didn't
provide that accurate information even though it was available
to them and they were grossly negligent?
Okay, so even though this person, I would say, wasn't
acting with malice or wasn't trying to steal money from
the Edd, I think that is probably the lowest threshold.
Okay, but with that being said, you are not going
to be found to have made a false statement.
Or if you haven't found to make a false statement
for making an honest mistake, then that is reversible and
honest mistake is not false statement, but it's going to
be incumbent on you to prove that you bear the
burden of showing that it was an honest mistake, and
you have to walk through the mechanism of the mistake
and no one's going to let you off easy.
It's a very hard inquiry and you have to be ready
to answer and explain and get the judge into your brain.
Why this mistake happened?
Why did you fill out the form this way?
Not that way, but I think the takeaway is you
don't want to put yourself in this position and you
want to use every tool you have available to you.
If you find yourself in this position to
get out, the best thing you can do
is, of course, appeal as quickly as possible.
Not let the sit. Investor.