My job, as it happens, involves managing funds related to the deceased. In this city, whenever an employee passes away, their family can come to the office where I work to claim two payments: one is the bereavement allowance, and the other is the funeral expenses. My responsibility is to handle the distribution of these funds.
It was during this time that I learned from her of a loophole within our company's system. To put it simply, this flaw could be exploited to make it appear as though a deceased person had "died" once again, at the data level. In this way, I could release another round of the bereavement allowance and funeral expenses. These funds would eventually flow into my account, my parents' account, and even into several bank cards I had purchased online. The more payment channels, the quieter the process would be.
"This system has been in use since the 1990s—it's outdated," she explained, her tone calm and unhurried. "There's no need to worry about it being flagged for anomalies because there's simply no function to detect 'anomalies.' Moreover, the manual approval process is always quite lenient. As long as you're careful with the details, no one will ever suspect a thing."
"And besides," she continued, her lips curving into a slight smile, "those people are long gone. How could they possibly notice such things?"