My question involves unemployment benefits for the state of: Michigan. Every year, my job lays off all the workers for winter season at our limestone quarry. So during that time I file and collect unemployment to maintain an income. Over this past year I have purchased a vehicle, making it even more important for me to get unemployment. As of last winter I decided to take some college classes during that layoff period, and as it is known with unemployment, you have to fill out a wavier during school in order to collect unemployment. So at the beginning of this spring, 2014 I filled out a wavier for unemployment and collected unemployment pay as intended. After I returned back to work later in the spring, I stopped collecting unemployment, because I was working full time at this point. Now in the fall, I got a notice letter from LARA in the mail in September stating that I was supposed to turn in a school transcript proving that I had finished the school year for spring 2014, and that I had failed to turned in my transcript on time. It also said because I had failed to turn in proof, that they believed I attempting fraud, and fined me 18,000$ as well as revoking all future unemployment privileges. And they also threatened to intercept all income tax returns, until I have full repaid. I usually only collect about 5,000$ during lay off period, these are kind of rough estimates.
The initial reason why I didn't see the previous notices from LARA, is because I set the notifications to be sent to my MiWAM account, and not via USPS. I would regularly check this account during the lay off period, but when I'm back to work I had no need to be on that account, so I never saw any of the notifications on my MiWAM, until I received a letter in the mail stating I needed to pay, so I went back to check on the internet, and found the letters, but at that point it was too late to turn in my proof of transcript.
A short time after this, I attempted to resolve this at a solutions office in Lansing, and they basically just told me I could change my settings, send in a transcript and hope for the best from their headquarters. After doing all of this, I received another notice stating that they denied my re determination request, and I still needed to pay the $18,000. After I received the second payment voucher, I also sent in an appeal at the same time as a payment to the collections agency to get this resolved. It's been a month since my response to them and I haven't heard anything about a possible appeal. I really need to get this resolved as soon as I can, because I am already on my layoff period. Any help would be greatly appreciated, if there's something I have missed or someone else I should go through, please state a suggestion, Thanks.
During the winter is the only time I can take classes. I also want to further my education aside from my boring job!! I can't believe that's the response I just got for trying to get an education!

