The term "ghost employee" is a standard English term used by auditors. Any sufficiently large organization must periodically reconcile the payroll system with

The term "ghost employee" is a standard English term used by auditors. Any sufficiently large organization must periodically reconcile the payroll system with managers and/or a timecard system. It is usually as simple as just sending a email to managers asking them to certify that a list of employees are working for them. There are often a bunch of edge case that must be worked out, like the people that don't have managers in the HR system, or people on leave where the paperwork didn't get processed correctly. Unfortunately, audits aren't really designed to uncover fraud with collusion. This is why any fraud that is found should be criminally prosecuted, which the Brazilians are doing correctly here. They need to also prosecute the employees that were receiving benefits without working as well.