Several of the recipients were puzzled to get the checks, including pensioner Manfred Barnreiter, 73, who said he believed he was the victim of a scam at first.

"We quietly went to the bank ... where we were told they'll see if it's real," Barnreiter told Austrian public broadcaster ORF. "Three days later, we had the money in our bank account."

Barnreiter, who briefly worked in the U.S. in the 1960s, received the full $1,200, as did his wife. Neither are citizens of the U.S. or live there, which are required to be eligible for the checks.

"People initially thought it's a treacherous form of fraud -- but the checks were real," a spokeswoman for Austria's Oberbank told the Washington Post.

The report comes the month after NPR reported thousands of foreigners who once worked in the U.S. had accidentally received checks. Government officials attributed the error to likely tax return errors.