Remember the character Milton from Office Space? He was the guy who was laid off, but didn’t know it and kept working at the company even when they corrected a clerical error that kept paying him? A story from New Jersey is basically the opposite of that. Anthony Armatys accepted a job at a telecom company called Avaya in 2002, then changed his mind. However, he’d already been added to the company payroll, and it didn’t occur to anyone to take him off of it. Fast forward a few years, and in 2007 someone finally realized Armatys had been collecting a paycheck for not working. He has just pleaded guilty to a count of theft as part of a plea bargain.
Here’s the thing: Armatys didn’t do anything accept decline a job. He didn’t fuck with the company’s computer system or anything - the mistake was theirs. Frankly, if a company started paying me a check even though I didn’t work there, I would probably keep the money and laugh my head off about how dumb they were. I mean, did no one ever wonder why checks were going to someone who didn’t work there? Was the company such a huge bureaucracy that it took five years to figure out there was a problem and correct it? I don’t think Armatys is at fault here.
He definitely is. My first job was a summer job and I received one paycheck after I had gone off to school, and I immediately called my former boss to let him know. He was nice and told me to keep the money, but he made sure that I was taken off payroll. The fact is that Armatys knew he didn’t work there, and yet he still cashed the checks. That makes him at fault.
Actually, while he may not be at fault for it starting, he is still responsible if he spent the money. I wonder if he tried notifying them of the error. Seriously, if you get money in your account you that you can’t identify or don’t know why you are receiving it, contact the company who sent it, but also contact your bank to let them know and do NOT spend the money. Put it in savings and make some interest, however little, but don’t spend it. As soon as the error is found, and it almost always is found eventually, they will demand the full balance back. If you can provide it, then there is probably no case, but if you can’t…well then this happens.