On the other hand, in a just world, continuing to show up would make it impossible for the company to try and claw back the money. He was available even if nobody asked anything of him.
I am more interested in how he was caught. There are many people around me who seemingly do nothing, he would just blend into the crowd. Were there layoffs or some other accounting of personnel that forced the issue?
He had to show up at work because he was never formally fired. If he hadn't showed up at work but still collect his paychecks then it would have been breaking the law and the company would have clawed back all paychecks. By showing up at work he was just fulfilling his contractual obligations, it wasn't his fault nobody gave him any work to do so he was legally entitled to collect paychecks while playing games and doing side projects at work.
> There are many people around me who seemingly do nothing, he would just blend into the crowd.
Not always the case. It might be a thing in large enterprises of US/Anglophone countries from what I noticed, but in German speaking countries it's not really common for people to show up at the office and do nothing all day, the efficiency and work ethic tends to be relatively higher, especially at smaller offices. So you stand out, people will gossip and eventually someone above will inquire about that guy without a team doing nothing.
Sure, you can lie to everyone around you about why you're still here without your team doing nothing so they stop asking questions, but lying can still be considered a felony here if the thing ends up in court and get you in actual legal trouble later as they will still find out eventually about you, so it's best to be honest and legally enjoy the ride while it lasts.
It took 8 months for the store to realize this and fire his butt. In his case, it was a meeting. It was an All Hands, his timecard showed he was clocked in, but never appeared at the meeting.
Not a silver bullet, but it covers a majority of these cases.
Milton has entered the chat.
I've worked at small (<1000 people) firms where there were at least 10 different entitlements systems and removing someone was a nightmare. I can 100% believe that this also happens at large companies (due to acquisition as you mention) too.
Though I've heard it's quite common in large enterprises that are fragmented due to a lot of aqui-hires, for corporate HR to forget or miss people they supposed to fire and who still remain on the payroll, especially on the satelite offices where there's no on-prem HR and nobody really knows what's going on from central.
A friend of mine was theoretically fired along with his entire team but just not him because corporate HR forgot about him or something, so he still showed up at the office without his team and without any work to do, badged in and played videogames all day for almost a year while getting paid in full, until some other people started asking "hey, who's is this guy and what does he actually do here all by himself?", then they actually fired him, or more like paid him a generous severance package to leave voluntarily in silence and not tell anyone about HR's blunder.
Lucky bastard.