From the article: "A council spokesman has told BBC Brasil that among those believed to be those "ghost employees" - as Brazilians call informally those who rec

From the article: "A council spokesman has told BBC Brasil that among those believed to be those "ghost employees" - as Brazilians call informally those who receive regular wages without actually showing up for work - are public workers in the areas of health, education and security." Yes. Education especially. The fraud is not always so high-tech. In many places in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America, schoolteachers can be on the taxpayer-subsidized payroll while regularly failing to show up for class on school days. School pupils can't count on teachers being in the building when they show up for school, so sometimes the pupils don't show up for school either. A similar pattern of schoolteacher union takeover of the state education system led to such widespread fraud in Mexico that the president of the schoolteacher union was recently arrested http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexican-teachers-union-chief-20130227,0,5980836.story http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexican-... http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130227/mexico-teachers-union-boss-arrested-corruption http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130227/mexico-te... as part of a corruption conspiracy investigation.