In most cases, I feel that waiting to see what the department will do is going to be worse for you. And while the advice to get an attorney and stop talking is good when you've robbed a bank or murdered your wife, unemployment fraud is a very different situation.
After three weeks of zero earnings, in which the company is going to be contacted to determine if you refused work (probably), and it will show up that you lied and said you were not offered any work, when in fact, you were too sick to work, they are not going to prosecute you criminally.
I will repeat over and over, they are much more interested in getting the money back than in launching an expensive and long term criminal prosecution except in the most extreme and blatant cases of fraud. I am a believer in being proactive with unemployment insurance, calling them up and working out how to take care of the overpayment. But in this case, I think you should wait until the department contacts you again.
Since you are already drawing unemployment benefits anyway, your company may decide to give you a break and just confirm zero earnings without going into "he called us and said he was sick and so he couldn't work those weeks." The form they send to the company asks for them to confirm the amount of earnings. If they did this, without going in to more detail, then you'd be home free.
What you really should have done was not file a weekly certification for those weeks in which you were too ill to work the hours the company had for you. This would have stopped your claim, and you would have had to call back and re-open your claim again when you were ready to go back to work and work all the hours the employer had for you again. Failure to do this got you overpaid for two or three weeks.
Unemployment insurance is not an income support program based on need. Therefore, "I was too sick to work and I was afraid my children would go hungry," is not a valid defense for your dishonesty. Unemployment insurance is that, an insurance that when you are able and available for work and there is not work available for you, then you receive this small weekly stipend. If you are too sick to work, you are not eligible for unemployment benefits. MANY people do not understand this. They believe that there is some income support for people who are unable to work. Not unless you have company or private or your state has temporary disability benefits. Not all do, by any means.
If you'd stopped drawing for a few weeks, the system would have taken those weeks worth of money and added them on at the end of the claim, you would not technically lose any unemployment benefits by doing this. But under the circumstances, you figured it was better to get the money now, and you lied to get it. The money was in there for you to get, it was just that that particular week or two, you did not meet the eligibility criteria to receive it.
This was not criminal misconduct. This was simple fraud, and what they would be likely do is take the next two or three weeks that you are legitimately eligible for benefits, with possibly some additional weeks of money for penalties, to cover this overpayment of several weeks. Once it is paid back and the overpayment is resolved, then you will be able to resume drawing benefits again until the amount in your account is exhausted.
But wait and let them tell you what to do. Keep filing for weeks, though you are in suspension at the present time, I suspect. Re-open your claim if you have to, to be able to keep filing for weeks that pass.
