oh yeah, thats a real thing. i used to work for this sketchy company, that hired about 40 people per week, every week, so there was a a lot of turn-over, back when applicants were a dime a dozen.

there were at least 2 shady things that i had heard rumors about.

1. there were multiple (illegal alien) employees using the same clock-number. which is extra weird, because our clock number was our social security number. our SS# would flash on the time clock every time w clocked in or out.

2. there were "ghost employees", which were fake people who didn't actually work there, but who collected a paycheck every week. i never understood how this scam could even work, without the management being aware of it.

i suspect this practice may have gotten started by this actual example of the stuff that went on.

two brothers, Bob and John, both work for the company. Bob gets promoted, and becomes Johns direct supervisor. John has an attendance problem, but its just minor, petty stuff like being a minute late once or twice a week, because John has always been "that guy" ever since he was a kid. Bob knows Johns a good dude. All of Johns co-workers know John is a good dude, so nobody cares that Bob fixes Johns time punches, in order to preserve Johns employment, and Bobs good employee.

should Bob and/or John be fired?

now extrapolate Bob and John's scenario out a little bit. John gets sick and needs to take a few days off. Bob knows John is sick af, because Bob has been over to Johns house to check on him. Bob knows the company is stingy with sick-pay, and he also knows John lives paycheck-to-paycheck, and needs money to live on.

Bob decides to go ahead and manually add John's "accidentally" missed clock times to the time and attendance sheet, to get John paid in full... knowing John will be back Monday, and John will have to work extra hard, just to catch up on his back-work anyway.

and eventually, John's ADHD/Adderall Rx finally morphs into a full fledged meth habit,

and it catches up with John, and John over-sleeps until noon-ish

and does a no-call no-show,

three days in a row.

pretty much abandons job.

his brother Bob keeps John on the payroll, knowing John will eventually hit rock bottom, and hopefully 'bounce", rather than splatter.

and so John becomes a "ghost employee". he collects a paycheck, but he doesn't show up.

now extrapolate that into hundreds, or even thousands of Ghost Johns in a huge company, and instead of Bob being the guy making the ghost employees,

its Mark Zuckerberg, or @Jack

or the Pentagon