An office assistant who was accidentally paid £126,860 instead of £385 and then quit the company has won a legal fight to keep the money – but the company has vowed to appeal
A man quit his job after being accidentally paid 330 times his salary – and then won a court fight to keep the money.
The employee, who worked at the Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos de Chile, was paid 165 million Chilean pesos (£126,860) instead of his salary of 500,000 pesos (£385) due to an error made by his company in May 2022. Once it discovered the mistake, the firm asked the man, who worked as an office assistant, to return the cash – and claimed he had agreed to do so during a meeting with HR.
However, three days later he resigned without returning the money. The multinational then sued the man, accusing him of theft, triggering a legal fight which lasted three years.
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Had the man been found guilty of theft, he could have been fined and potentially jailed for up to 540 days. However, in September judges in Santiago, Chile, dismissed the case, saying the man had not stolen but ruling that it was a case of an “unauthorised collection”.
Since it was not deemed a theft, the court could not prosecute the matter, according to Diario Financiero. But despite the ruling, the company said it will appeal the decision as it remains determined to get thee money back.
“The Food Industrial Consortium will take all possible legal action, in particular an appeal for annulment, to review the conclusion,” it said in a statement. It comes following reports that a teacher in Germany went on sick leave for 16 years but was being paid her full £48,000 salary the whole time without the school noticing.
The biology and geography teacher went on leave in August 2009 due to a chronic illness and psychological problems. She should have been assessed by a doctor after a three-month absence, which never happened, and her sick leave was systematically renewed for nearly 20 years.
According to Bild, the teacher reportedly earned between €5,051 (£4,369) and €6,174 (£5,341) per month. She managed to go under the radar until a change of management in 2024 when an internal audit revealed the “oversight” that lasted for two decades.
Dorothee Feller, the education minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, said: “I have a lot of questions because I’ve never been confronted with a case like this before.” An examination is now due to be held to establish the teacher’s state of health.