No it didn't happen, and if it did you lost credibility posting under a throwaway.
What's so utterly unbelievable about this story? Like, almost none of it is surprising at all.
I can tell you yesterday I went to the beach and that's not utterly unbelievable either but it's still not true.
This is true, but I'm not gonna shout you down as a liar for such a statement either, unless I had some evidence to the contrary.
So you're so utterly convinced they're lying about this because....
To his credit, the family member took it as a life lesson and moved on (probably more than I have given my posting here). These days he deals with companies that value his contributions, and it turns out that his ex-employer's loss is other companies' (significant) gain.