Carles Recio, a Spanish public servant who worked as an archives director in Valencia’s provincial government, was fully paid even though he was a ghost worker for all of 10 years.
Reico’s truancy was reported by Spanish newspaper El Mundo who broke the story after colleagues started to get suspicious.
Reico’s method of ghosting was simply to show up to the office every morning at 7:30am to clock in using the fingerprint scanner before heading home, only returning to the office at 3:30pm to clock out.
And even with this, Reico was still paid 50,000 euro as his salary
The ghost worker has been fired and the possibility of criminal proceedings were discussed, but ultimately they were dropped as it was noted that what he did while abhorrent was not criminal.
He maintains that he did nothing wrong, however, saying: “I have only done what they have asked me to do,”
“No one can show me a photograph in which I’m in a cafeteria, I’m a man of action,”
“I do documentation work out of the office, the work of a slave. Working like a slave means that I work so that others get the fruit of my labour.”
He didn’t get to go scot-free as he has been banned from holding public posts for nine years by a tribunal.
The same tribunal investigated the work he claimed to do and found no evidence to support this.
The Tribunal also stated that it found not evidence he had told superiors he didn’t have a desk following an office relocation, or that he had been assigned an external project to create an “inclusive art centre”.
According to the Tribunal: “There is not the slightest evidence that he was entrusted with the project of creating an inclusive art work centre or similar and the activities carried out by him are more like private dedications than authentic ones,”
While Reico may not have been doing his job, he was busy. He took the time to create an erotic comic book and was also the creator of the popular character Fallarela.
It has also been revealed that Recio had been running a male brothel out of his home since 2005.