A few days after a federal judge issued a Jan. 11 order commanding the state to “suspend all collection activity” against thousands of Michigan workers tagged with unemployment fraud, Jason Doss checked his bank account.

It was business as usual.

Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency, as it has for nearly two years, was still taking one fourth of his Ford Motor Co. paycheck citing unemployment fraud. It seized $212.57 on Jan. 17. It took $196.91 the following week. It claimed yet another $196.36 last week, on Feb. 3 -- a day after the state settled a federal lawsuit by agreeing to sweeping reforms of the agency’s error-filled fraud identification system.

To date, UIA has taken more than $14,000 from Doss' checks. And the settlement notwithstanding, the agency says he still owes nearly $70,000, which includes a penalty of more than $62,000 and over $7,000 in interest. Doss is among a flood of workers who insist they were incorrectly accused of fraud by a rogue state computer, never told the precise nature of what they had done wrong, and were never given a chance to defend their actions before their paychecks were garnished. An internal state review of more than 20,000 fraud claims showed a 93 percent computer error rate.

Doss, 37, a soft-spoken suburban Detroit resident who keeps meticulous records of every penny the state has taken, tries to curtail his rage every time he looks at the money taken from his checks.

“If I dwell on it, I could go crazy. It's like being robbed,” Doss said, seated at his dining room table, scanning a printout of every check the state has taken.

“If I dwell on it, I could go crazy. It's like being robbed.” -- Jason Doss, a Detroit-area worker who said he was wrongly accused of fraud

Doss is one of four Michigan workers ensnared in the state’s unemployment benefits fraud debacle who agreed to talk to Bridge Magazine about the toll it has taken on their lives. A suburban Detroit woman declared bankruptcy. An Eaton County resident fell behind in his bills. A Washtenaw County electrician recounted his wife crying before Christmas after he was told he owed the state $13,000.

Doss said he has a bit more hope he might finally win back his money following last week’s announced settlement of a federal lawsuit that accused the unemployment agency of saddling thousands of workers with bogus fraud charges, cases UIA says it’s now willing to review and, if warranted, reverse.

But even that announcement would not end the anxiety felt by workers unfairly targeted. In a bizarre coda to the computer saga, the state reported Friday that a software glitch may have allowed some users of the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System -- or MiDAS -- to access the names and Social Security numbers of nearly 1.9 million workers whose payroll was processed by third-party vendors. That's nearly 40 percent of the state workforce.

UIA spokesman Dave Murray said the data breach and the UIA fraud mess, both tied to Colorado-based firm Fast Enterprises, are “very, very different issues.”

“Our No. 1 focus at the UIA is serving Michigan residents,” he said.

The federal lawsuit settlement binds UIA to an earlier agreement that the state would review each fraud case generated by the computer -- impacting some 40,000 workers -- and ensure workers get appropriate notice of the accusations and an opportunity to respond before the state starts collection efforts.

The deal also ends the state’s heavily criticized practice of “income spreading,” in which claimants' occasional work earnings were treated by the computer system as having been earned across an entire quarter. Attorneys say the practice led the state to falsely conclude some workers were illegally getting paychecks during periods when they were also collecting unemployment insurance.

For its part, the state agency is now acknowledging the potential scope of the damage. An agency internal review in December found that nearly 21,000 workers – 93 percent of the cases reviewed – had been falsely accused of fraud over a 22-month period.

David Blanchard, lead attorney for the lawsuit, said he is “heartened by new leadership who finally acknowledge the problem and recognize that this settlement is this first step, but not the last step, of essential reform to the UIA.”

“We’re glad to bring this matter to a close,” said Wanda M. Stokes, director of the Talent Investment Agency, which oversees the UIA, in a statement after the suit was settled. Stokes, named to the post last July, recently told the Associated Press she was angered by the agency’s failures and that damage done to workers “shouldn’t have happened.”

Royal Oak attorney Jennifer Lord, who leads a separate lawsuit seeking class-action status in state court against UIA, called the agreement “an important and positive first step forward.” That lawsuit seeks recovery of garnished wages, penalties and interest as well as other monetary damage caused by false fraud findings.

But Lord said there remain “many outstanding issues,” including ongoing garnishments of workers’ paychecks, like those cited by Doss, and the state's failure to account for money that may have been wrongly seized from workers in 2016.

“Government by spreadsheet does not work,” Lord said.

For Jason Doss, the cuts into his paycheck continue. The federal court order from January halting fraud collections gave the state 45 days to comply. So Doss continues to check his bank account every week to see when his garnishment might finally end.

Even today, Doss said he remains at a loss about what he is accused of doing wrong.

Doss said he learned he was being penalized for fraud only after he discovered that first garnished check in March 2015. The garnishment appears to be for unemployment payments he received relating to a manufacturing job six years ago – payments that he had already litigated against UIA before a (live, not computer) administrative law judge and won on appeal.

“I looked online and it said: 'Your wages are subject to garnishment by the Unemployment Insurance Agency Plaintiff Benefit Enforcement Unit.' It said I owed $84,000.

“I thought, 'There must be a mistake. They will fix it.'”

“You really feel like a victim. They go after the working people and that isn't right.” -- Sterling Heights resident Nancy DeRocco

Doss said he had closed out his UIA account years ago after returning to work, so he would have missed any notice of fraud posted there. He said he got no notice through the mail, even though he updated his address each time he moved.

“I called five or 10 times before I got through. Then I was on hold for 45 minutes. They transferred me three times. All they could tell me was, 'You owe $84,000,'” he said.

Doss and his wife, Syretta, 33, are expecting their first child in August. He scratches to make mortgage payments, grateful that his mortgage loan allows him an extra 15 days each month before he's considered delinquent. He said the $14,000 in pay that was diverted to the state has left him behind in putting money away for the future.

“You want to provide for your family and your child and right now I really can't do that. It's put a toll on my life and marriage.”

At the center of the controversy is the $47-million MiDAS computer system the state installed in 2013 to streamline unemployment fraud detection. That was a year after after UIA laid off 400 full- and part-time employees - a third of its workforce. In essence, the computer system and its algorithms replaced human beings, presiding as judge and jury over tens of thousands of unemployment cases.

As the system’s errors emerged, the agency’s decision to automate the fraud detection process has cast MiDAS as another example of Gov. Rick Snyder's efforts to make government more efficient having gone horribly wrong. UIA itself boasted in 2014 that the system “is now more responsive and efficient with its customers, thus, creating a greater sense of service-level trust.”

While undeniably more efficient, the computer and the state agency that ran it by all accounts appear to have been singularly unresponsive to the tsunami of complaints and desperate phone calls that poured into UIA after fraud notifications or collections went out to bewildered workers across Michigan.

According to the state lawsuit, a training guide for the new computer system noted its unchecked authority to determine fraud: “Regardless of the manner in which the information is gathered, maintained, or processed, all UI functions are ultimately performed by MiDAS.”

Michigan’s unemployment system, which pays out $1.7-billion in benefits a year, is funded by taxes on employers for workers who are laid off and meet state standards for length of employment and earnings.