Unemployment benefits in Illinois

[stilldre]

Can IDES suspend a state issued nursing license if you get audited?

 

[Banned_Princess]

Can IDES suspend a state issued nursing license if you get audited?

how about some more info.

and

it depends on additional info not given.

 

[commentator]

I assume you are talking about being audited for unemployment insurance and in the course of such an audit (which they do continuously and on a certain number of claims every single day) their discovering that you are committing deliberate unemployment insurance fraud. Have you been told you are being audited? Have you been told you have been determined to have commited fraud or misreported your unemployment insurance in some way. Is this the case? If so, then they'll declare you overpaid, and they'll take steps to see that you pay back the money. You have appeals to go through for this. They have a long process that they'll be putting you through before you are declared overpaid, and an overpayment program is constructed for you and you refuse to comply with it. If they really had to, if you fight them and hide from them and won't cooperate long enough, and you are committing deliberate unemployment fraud, then they could actually charge you criminally, and yes indeed this could cause you to lose your nursing license due to being charged with a felony.

But as far as "Ooops, you didn't make enough job searches last week! We're going to take away your nursing license!" No, that's absurd. The only agency that would take away your nursing license would be the nursing license issuing agency (department of health?) and that would be for some failure to comply with something related to their department, like failing to report that you've been charged with a felony, or failing to renew the license timely.

If you have a big old outstanding overpayment on your unemployment record, then anytime you start to sign up for or renew another state licensure, like a nursing license renewal or a contractor's license or something of this type, the overpayment may show up and you'll be told to contact the unemployment agency and get this overpayment dealt with before you can renew your license. But as I said, this would only happen after a big old deal with the unemployment insurance system in which you would know fully well that you had that overpayment sitting there.

 

[stilldre]

Well, basically, I've been audited and found to have been overpaid twice in the last 15 months. Both times I complied and set up repayment plans and followed through with them. The question I have is that I attended a couple of night classes during the period I was on unemployment and didn't report it. My thinking at the time was that they were at night and probably not a big deal, but now I see that that was dumb and naive. Now I'm wondering if they find out about the classes and find me ineligible or overpaid for that period, could they suspend my license, or would they continue with the usual process of ruling me ineligible and set up a payment plan.

 

[swalsh411]

I don't see about how they would find out about them.

Going forward, how about you follow the rules instead of what you think makes more sense then the rules? Then you won't have any issues with not disclosing something. It's not to you to decide what should or should not be reported. If you're supposed to report something, report it.

 

[commentator]

I agree, this issue is over. Even if you did commit a sin of omission like this, and they found out about it, it's really water under the bridge. They would, if they found out you had committed fraud as in "didn' t tell them you were going to night school" probably tell you to forget about it at this point. Because the whole idea of school and unemployment is that while you're in school, you're not able and available and seeking full time work, because you're in school. Since you have now completed school and have (we hope) gotten a job, and are drawing no more unemployment, and will not have any more to draw now for a long time, just sit on it. Re read swalsh's advice. You did commit lying and you did it knowing it was something you should have reported, and you chose not to because you were afraid you wouldn't like the answer you would get and didn't want to go through the hassle of doing it fully according to the rules.

But that's between you and your conscience. If you went in and "confessed" at this point, the system wouldn't want to hear about it, would probably encourage you to just go away. It doesn't really change your eligibility, you can't give the money back to the employer's account at this point without a decision, the decision would take up time and resources away from the department far more expensively than any recoup of the money you drew might bring about, and you very likely would be judged to have been in compliance anyhow and wouldn't have been overpaid, since you might very well have quit school and taken a good job offer if you had received it while you were drawing benefits. There's no way the system could prove you wouldn't have, and no way either you or the system can say what you MIGHT have done under the circumstances. So sit on it. Work it out with yourself.

One of the most terrible hassles we would sometimes have to deal with was the noble souls who'd watch "Cinderella Man" or listen to too much talk radio and get motivated to "pay back the welfare" they'd received from the unemployment Insurance system. Or the person who'd come in and confess he'd committed unemployment fraud (by not really making the job searches he listed) two years ago in another state, who was now coming to us trying to relieve his conscience. And we certainly did not want a repayment in cash of the unemployment someone drew two years ago from another state. Taking that money back into the system would involve a decision made by that state, we can't just take it and put it in some "honest citizen's account " that we have somewhere. I always secretly suspected these people could've found a lot worse stuff they'd done to confess and were just using us as a device to "show off" their newfound virtue.

Blatant unemployment fraud is going to be found. If you are working somewhere and drawing benefits, the system will catch this eventually. If you are drawing benefits using your dead brother's social security number and working, someone who doesn't like you will tip us off and you'll be caught eventually. These are real fraud cases. If you were drawing benefits, filling out the paperwork and showing up for call ins as required, particularly if you went through two audits and they didn't notice that you were going to night school, I'd say you are very much in the clear.

And as I've said before, they wouldn't "take your nursing license" even if you received an unfavorable decision and an overpayment from unemployment, which isn't likely .

After the fact, a situation like this, with subjective things involved ("I really didn't want the job I applied for, so I didn't wash my hair before I went on the interview!")
is nothing we are able to resolve. You can't say what might have happened if you'd done things differenly some time before. My best advice is for you to follow the rules now and do the best you can to be an ethical person. Work under the assumption that you'll probably be caught if you try to get by with something, and the chances of your sliding by are not as good as the chances you will have made yourself a lot more hassles by not following the rules.

 

[davew128]

I'm going to take a different approach here. Going to school part time at night usually isn't something that should have any impact on benefits as it doesn't have any affect on the ability to seek and obtain FT employment.

 

[Betty]

Unless the person doesn't accept an evening/night job offered or one that requires evening OT since the person is going to school in the evenings (night school). However, the person "probably" would have quit night school to accept a job or can say she/he would have.

I do agree that going to night school shouldn't keep a person from looking for work.

 

[commentator]

And I agree too. It's just that any going to school or training is considered part of the weekly certification in most cases, as in "Did you begin or stop any sort of school, training, etc.?" And the fact that the person was audited twice and they failed to pick up on it both times. I agree with Betty, they'd probably just have been required to say, "I'm going to school part time at night and if I were to find a job that interfered with this, I'd be willing to take the job anyway." But this sin of omission to mention something is not out and out fraud in the category of saying I'm not working when I am.

In my younger days, I went to school all the time. Very likely, if laid off, I would not even have thought of mentioning to unemployment that I was taking a class somewhere each semester, it was just something I did, whether I was working or not. The OP doesn't need to worry about this issue. That he/she actually got nipped for some sort of overpayment twice (misreporting of wages?) in the course of the claim is the thing that makes me wonder. I mean, didn't you get it after the first time? It's not a good idea to try to see what you can get away without mentioning to the system that is certifying you for a government program. It rarely works well.

 

[stilldre]

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