Company hunts down ex-employee who got 286 salaries at once

A man got ridiculously overpaid by accident, promised to return the money, then resigned and vanished

An office worker at Chilean cold cuts conglomerate Cial has walked off with 286 times his salary after his employer accidentally overpaid him last month, local media outlets recently reported. The company is attempting to take legal action against him for misappropriation of its property.

While the unnamed dispatch assistant reportedly approached his deputy manager to reveal he’d been prodigiously overpaid on May 30, receiving 165,398,851 Chilean pesos ($180,000) for the month instead of the 500,000 ($542) he normally earned, and even said he would pay the money back the next morning, the funds did not appear in the company’s account. His superiors’ efforts to contact him went unanswered for hours, but when he finally responded, he said he had overslept and would go to the bank right away.

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Unfortunately for Cial, the next message from their accidentally-wealthy employee was a letter of resignation, delivered two days later via a lawyer. The funds remain unaccounted for, and the worker has reportedly disappeared, leaving the company to scramble to recover its money through the legal system.

Cial is Chile’s largest producer of cold cuts, responsible for several popular brands including San Jorge, La Preferida, and Winter. However, the company’s annual revenues reportedly do not exceed $5 million, meaning the amount he was paid represents a serious bite out of its profits. 

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