<prompt> Human: Hi,I have been working for 6 months for a big company in Australia from October 2013 to April 2014.The problem is that they kept paying me after that. The first month, I thought it was just my normal end of contract paycheck.When they paid me again in June, I sent an email to my previous manager explaining the whole situation and he contacted the HR department , adding me in copy of that email.These idiots couldnt find any other word to describe them .. keep paying me every month still.I have been transferring that money onto my savings account and not touching it in case they finally wake up.As I told them already by email, should I sit back and relax, just making sure I dont spend that money ?Im quite unsure about Australian law regarding this kind of things.Thanks!---EDIT :First, thanks everyone for your help! Reddit is awesome!From what I read, everyone agrees that I should NOT consider this money as mine which was my original thought.I opened an enquiry at after reading this and they called me back telling me they cant do anything and advising me to seek legal advice so I am gonna contact my local Legal Centre which is free.I will also go to my bank this morning to see if I can refuse future payments from this company.I will update when I know more about it in case someone in the same situation in Australia knows what to do!Assistant: I dont know Australian law either, but in any case, treating the money as not yours sounds like the safest thing to do.Companies exist to make profit so I have to imagine at some point, someone will correct the mistake.Human: Thats the idea. Even though Im trying to be honest with all this, I was thinking that by next August, assuming they stopped paying me by then, I would consider that being the end of the financial year, they will have realized if something is wrong on their side.Maybe after that I can consider that they gave up on that money?Assistant: Imo, only a truly incompetent company could possibly let this mistake slide.Someone at that company must be responsible for payroll and getting all the numbers to add up, and someone is going to have a very miserable time when they find out what happened. Im guessing the email you sent to your former manager and to HR may not have reached the right person, because if the right person knew about this and didnt act, I imagine they would soon find themselves out of a job.In any case, as long as you still have the money sitting in the bank account and have made a genuine effort to correct the mistake contact the company, Id guess youre probably in the clear. Someone at that company is going to have a bad day soon when they have to fix this mess.Human: Apparently the person that the email was transferred to is the company payroll manager. The email was sent the 16th of July so before the end of previous financial year which is in August I believe. The number of employees, from what Ive found, is between 5000 and 10 000.Assistant: There should be a sizable hole in payroll accruals because of this.If there isnt, just how badly managed are these finances?Human: Yeah, is OP the only person this happened to? Probably not, in a company of 10k people.Assistant: My status was quite special. It was my first job in Australia and because of my visa, I could only work for 6 months in a row for the same company. The funny part is that they didnt want to pay for a visa that would allow me to stay with them longer 3k and now they are throwing money away on my account every month...  <response>: Theyll figure it out eventually. Dont spend the money, at least not until the company goes bankrupt and all the accounts are settled. 