A Hungarian man temporarily became a rich man, after the company he worked for accidentally paid him 367 times more than he had actually earned. And when the employer asked for the money back, he refused to pay.

The unnamed man, who hails from Hungary’s Somogy County, briefly worked for a company in Kaposvár but his employment was terminated during the trial period. For his short stint at the company, he stood to earn 92,549 forints, which amounted to 238 euros ($260), but in a feat of incredible generosity, his employer wired him 367 times that amount. Actually, it was just a huge mistake caused by the fact that the man had provided an Austrian bank account, so the salary had to be paid in the local currency, euros. Only instead of converting the forints to euros, they sent the lucky man 92,549 euros instead…

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Soon after realizing the mistake, the Hungarian company contacted its former employee and asked him to return the money that had been accidentally wired to his bank account. However, the man said that he did not have access to the Austrian bank account anymore, so he couldn’t wire them the money back. Only that obviously wasn’t the end of it, and a subsequent police investigation found that the man had extracted some 15,500 euros in cash from his Austrian account through an ATM in southern Hungary and transferred it to another bank account.

With the help of the Kaposvár District Prosecutor’s Office, the company managed to freeze the Austrian bank account of the accused and arranged for the money to be transferred back to its own bank account. According to Hvg.hu, it has recovered around 72,000 euros so far, but hopes to eventually receive the full amount wired to its former employee.

Photo: Eduardo Soares/Unsplash

As for the accused, he has been charged with unlawful appropriation and risks a huge fine.

Last year, we featured the similar story of a Chilean man who accidentally received 268 times his salary and vanished without a trace to avoid paying it back.