VERO BEACH, Fla. — The U.S. Treasury Department says stimulus payments were sent to more than 80 million Americans. However, some of those payments were sent to wrong bank accounts.
Daphne Mathews is a teacher living in Vero Beach who planned to use her stimulus money for a modest vacation with her children.
The IRS app showed $1,200 had been deposited in her bank account. It wasn't.
“The discrepancy was that the last four digits in the account that was deposited, was not my bank account,” said Mathews.
She doesn’t understand how that could happen.
The IRS has had no problem depositing her tax refunds into her account for the past 15 years.
But this week, Mathews received an email saying the IRS would try to deposit the money again.
“Unfortunately, the same wrong digits appeared,” said Mathews, whose tax preparer told her the account number may have been that of a pre-paid bank card in her family that closed when the money was spent. “This is an oversight that needs to be corrected."
Contact 5 reached out to the IRS to help find what happened to Mathews as she tries to take part in the national rebound from the corona virus slump.
An IRS spokeswoman replied, “The IRS also noted that there was a reporting error that started showing up in recent days on Get My Update, which inaccurately indicated rejected payments were being sent back to the same taxpayer account a second time. They are actually being mailed to the taxpayers. The IRS has quickly taken steps to correct this reporting error.”
While Mathews awaits her check, she learned her Aunt Rose in Alabama, who died last summer, got a stimulus payment.
“That’s kind of a family joke,” said Mathews. “You didn’t get yours, but a deceased relative did receive hers.”
The elementary school teacher is still getting paid by the school system, and she will eventually get her stimulus check in the mail.
Mathews worries about those whose stimulus payments were deposited in the wrong accounts, for people who recently lost their jobs, and need the money now.
