Nicole Ingram was at the supermarket when she got a confusing text. Her payroll check for working as a nursing assistant in New Jersey, which had been deposited into her account, was being withdrawn.

On that morning in September, thousands of workers across the country received a similar notification. In all, tens of millions of dollars in direct deposit payments suddenly disappeared.

The paychecks were supposed to have been electronically routed through an upstate New York payroll management company, MyPayrollHR.

Ordinarily, MyPayrollHR would transfer the funds to a corporate middleman, Cachet Financial Services, which would then distribute the direct deposits to employees nationwide.