A Chilean man who was accidentally paid 286 times his salary last month resigned from the company and vanished after promising to return the money paid in excess.
Someone in the human resources department of Chile’s largest producer of cold cuts, Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos (Cial), must be sweating profusely right now. By accident, they paid an employee 165,398,851 Chilean pesos ($180,000) last month, instead of the 500,000 pesos ($542) they were entitled to, and now that person apparently doesn’t want to give the money back. They have resigned from their position and vanished without a trace, leaving the company no other option but to lawyer up and try to recover their losses.
Photo: Viacheslav Bublyk/Unsplash
According to Chilean newspaper Diario Financiero, on May 30th, an office assistant at Cial approached a deputy manager to report an error in his monthly payment. After checking their account, the person noticed that they had been paid millions of pesos in excess, and wanted to clarify the issue.
After checking their records, Cial management confirmed that the person in question had indeed been paid about 286 times their monthly salary by mistake, and informed them that they needed to return the money paid in excess. The worker allegedly agreed to go to their bank early the next day and refund their employer, only they ended up doing something very different.
Photo: Cial headquarters
After Cial’s financial department noticed that the bank had not notified them about the refunded payment, they tried contacting the worker again, only their messages were left unanswered. A while later, the worker got in touch, claiming that they had overslept and would visit the bank shortly. Only they never did that, and on June 2nd, they simply handed in their resignation through a law firm.
The worker has now reportedly disappeared, leaving the company no choice but to take legal action about what it considers a crime of misappropriation and hope that it can recover at least some of the $180,000 paid accidentally.
