Houston – More than 20,000 former Enron Corp. employees who finally received the first payment from a portion of millions in retirement funds lost during the company’s collapse have been told they were either overpaid or underpaid because of a computer glitch.
Now some ex-workers might have to pay back money if they got too much.
Last year, former Enron workers received about $89 million, the first payment that is part of a lawsuit settlement over money they lost through Enron’s employee stock ownership and 401(k) plans.
But nearly $22 million of the initial payment was miscalculated, said Harlan Loeb, spokesman for Enron, now known as Enron Creditors Recovery Corp.
About 7,700 ex-workers were overpaid, and about 12,800 were underpaid, but they won’t know their fate until the recalculation is finished.
Enron is blaming the problem on Hewitt Associates, an Illinois-based company it hired to allocate the settlement proceeds.
A software program that Hewitt used to calculate payments used the wrong stock price, Loeb said.
“It certainly was a profound mistake,” he said.
