A Payroll Error for the Ages
Every month, countless employees cross their fingers that HR will make a “generous” mistake in their favor. It’s a rare event, but on May 30, 2022, a distribution assistant at Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos, a major player in the Chilean food industry, discovered an error that would make anyone’s heart skip a beat: his employer had paid him not once, but 330 times his salary.
From Pesos to Fortune: The Surreal Discovery
As Maud Descamps explained on “Bonjour ! La Matinale TF1”, the company accidentally transferred a staggering 165 million Chilean pesos into the employee’s account–instead of the expected 500,000.
“Not bad, 172,000 euros instead of the 522 euros he usually made each month,”
the journalist quipped. The stunned employee did the responsible thing at first and called his employer to raise the alarm about the error. But just as the company began to process what had happened, he vanished from the radar for several days.
Letters, Lawyers… and a Disappearing Act
As the drama unfolded, the employee sent in his resignation through a lawyer, then effectively vanished. Meanwhile, the company—understandably—launched legal proceedings, demanding the enormous overpayment be returned. After months of legal back-and-forth, on September 8, 2025, the Chilean courts handed down their verdict: the employee was not required to give the money back to his former employer.
Legal Tug-of-War and Dreams of French Workers
Unsurprisingly, Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos, also known as Cial, is not about to take this lying down. According to France’s Le Figaro, the aggrieved employer is determined to overturn the court’s decision.
“Cial will take every possible legal action, including an appeal to nullify the decision, so that the conclusion can be reviewed,”
the company’s leadership told Chilean newspaper Diario Financiero.
For employees elsewhere, especially in France, such an outcome is little more than a dream. The reason? The law in France is very different on this topic. As Maud Descamps pointed out:
“Be aware that if a similar case happened in France, the employer has three years to act.”
So, while most of us will probably never find ourselves staring at a bank balance swollen by a payroll mistake of epic proportions, at least we now have a story to fuel our end-of-month fantasies. And for one lucky (and now very wealthy) Chilean, payday really did become a day to remember.
