The city is demanding that EMS workers repay the combined $3.5 million they were accidentally overpaid, the Daily News reported.
Some workers saw an increase of a few hundred dollars in their paychecks, but there were a handful of employees who received as much as $10,000 – all dependent on the amount of overtime they worked between March and August, according to the report.
Only the 20 EMTs, paramedics and officers who volunteer for the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division (B-HEARD), were supposed to receive monetary bonuses, but a clerical error in the payroll department led to all 3,590 employees getting paid, the report said. The bonuses were an incentive for employees to join the program, according to the report. The mistake was discovered over the summer and immediately stopped.