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Journalism of Courage
A Chilean man who quit his job after receiving a payment 300 times his usual salary has won a legal battle allowing him to keep the money.
The man, employed as an assistant at Dan Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos de Chile, was normally paid around 386 pounds per month. In May 2022, however, his employer mistakenly transferred 127,000 pounds to his account, according to Metro.
Company representatives said he initially promised to return the funds but resigned just three days later. This sparked a three-year legal battle, during which the employee was accused of theft. A court in Santiago has now ruled that the incident constituted “unauthorised collection” rather than theft.
Because of this distinction, the judge determined that the case could not be prosecuted as a criminal offence. The company has stated that it will pursue every legal avenue to reclaim the money, including filing for an annulment of the judgment.
In a statement to Diario Financiero, the company said it was “taking all possible legal steps” to have the ruling reviewed.
The unusual case follows another headline-grabbing story from the United Kingdom involving workplace misconduct. A police officer in Durham was accused of deceiving his supervisors while working from home.
Detective Constable Niall Thubron, 33, allegedly engaged in “key jamming,” pressing a single keyboard key repeatedly to give the impression that he was working. According to the disciplinary hearing, he jammed his keyboard 28 times over twelve days.
Thubron was found guilty of gross misconduct, and the panel concluded he would have been dismissed had he not already resigned from Durham Police in May.
