A Brazilian news show broadcast video of a doctor touching her fingertip to the biometric clocking-in device at the hospital in the Sao Paulo region.
The video then showed the doctor using two fake fingers made of silicon to do the same for two absent colleagues, and then collecting slips of paper to claim that they had clocked-in.
That way it looked like there were several doctors on duty when there was just one.
Another television network claimed that the head of the emergency room ran the clocking-in scam – and that his daughter had not worked a day in three years but got paid all the time.
The town’s mayor fears there may be up to 300 phantom people on the hospital payroll who exist only as “silicon fingers” – while someone is collecting their pay.
Five doctors at the hospital have been suspended as part of an investigation.