His company accidentally paid him hundreds of times his salary. He promptly resigned and disappeared.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on July 5, 2022. It has since been updated.

An unnamed worker formerly employed at Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos (CIAL) in Chile was accidentally paid hundreds of times his normal salary. Once he cashed in his check, he resigned and disappeared. At present, his employers are still on the hunt for him in the hopes that they will be able to retrieve their funds. So far, there have been no updates on his whereabouts or whether the company has been able to trace him successfully. The story has gone viral on the internet, with social media users praising the employee for his quick thinking at a time when companies continue to exploit their workers, LAD Bible reports.

Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos (CIAL) is an industrial food company. In fact, it is one of the country's largest producers of cold cut meats. According to the Chilean financial news website Diario Financiero, the unnamed worker was supposed to receive a monthly pay of 500,000 Chilean pesos. When converted to U.S. dollars, that is about $527. This is significantly higher than Chile's national monthly minimum wage of approximately 400,000 Chilean Pesos, which is $421, according to the most recent statistics from Take-Profit.org.

However, largely due to a clerical error, the worker was paid a much larger sum back in May. The company accidentally paid him 165,398,851 Chilean pesos, which is $174,182. This is about 330 times his regular salary—though other sources report 286 times his salary. Either way, it's a lot. Eventually, the company's human resources department picked up on the error and CIAL reached out to the employee to discuss his mistaken wage. Chilean legal documents claim, "He was informed and clarified that this money did not correspond to the payment of any service." Initially, the employee agreed to go to his bank the next morning to sort out the repayment but he then failed to show up to work and went on to disappear completely.

His employers were unable to contact him, despite reaching out to the employee multiple times via telephone, text and the messaging app WhatsApp. On June 2, nonetheless, the worker made contact to tender his resignation. Having heard nothing else from the former employee, the firm has launched legal action against him to try and get the excess pay back. Thus far, no arrests have been made and legal authorities in Chile are still on the hunt for the unnamed worker.

While his employers are rather frustrated by the situation, social media users online have praised the employee's actions. For instance, one individual posted on Twitter, "It is good to see common sense used nowadays. It is rare." Another added, "I [have] been waiting so long to read a success story like this. [I] had to read it twice to make sure!" Others claimed they would have done the same. "Great," one Twitter user wrote. "I would [have] done the same." What would you have done?