A government worker has run his bosses up a cool half million euro phone bill – calling sex hotlines when he should have been working.
The social security operative, aged 40 and working in Lisbon, made hundreds of calls to erotic telephone services during office hours over a period of a year-and-a-half, Correio da Manhã newspaper reports.
Damage in the form of phone bill expenses came to “more than €500,000”, and the disgraced worker is now being charged with abusive and illicit use of phone lines.
He was arrested last week by PJ police after a two-month investigation, said the newspaper report, alleging that he not only cost public funds but also profited from his crimes as he received “kickbacks” for having made such a large volume of telephone calls.
Appearing before magistrates last week, the man has been suspended from duty and is now awaiting trial.
