Rhode Island Mistakenly Mails Tax Refund Checks Signed by Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney

More than 150 people in Rhode Island accidentally received tax refund checks signed by none other than Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney, rather than their state officials.

According to CNN, the misprinted signatures were on 176 tax refund checks. The error was the result of a technical glitch in the printing system for the state’s Division of Taxation. The state’s news station WPRI reported that Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney are the names used on dummy checks for internal testing. Jade Borgeson, chief of staff for Rhode Island’s Department of Revenue, told CNN that the test-image files were mistakenly used on the real checks.

Rhode Island’s state treasurer Seth Magaziner and state controller Peter Keenan should have been the signatures featured on the checks. In a photo posted by NBC 10 WJAR online, Mickey Mouse’s name was printed where Magaziner’s should have been, and Disney’s took Keenan’s spot.

The 176 tax refund checks were mostly corporate tax refunds and were mailed to taxpayers on Monday. The misprinted checks were mostly related to business taxes, like sales tax, corporate refunds and tax credit refunds. After they were mistakenly mailed out, the checks were voided and can no longer be deposited.

Replacement checks with the proper signatures will be mailed out to the affected taxpayers within a week.

“The division is continuing to proactively contact impacted taxpayers to remedy the error, and apologizes for any inconvenience the error may have caused,” Borgeson told CNN. Rhode Island’s Division of Taxation said that anyone who received one of the incorrect checks should contact the Department of Revenue.