Recently I read a comment thread on Ask a Manager where people were talking about mistakes they made at work, some costing the company far more than $60K. The commenters who worked for reasonable companies generally didn't lose their jobs over the mistakes, in part because they owned up to the mistake as soon as they realized it and worked with their company to mitigate it rather than in secret (and no, they weren't required to come up with restitution out of their own pocket, unless the error was "I claimed too much on this expense form".)

I agree that something sounds off about girlfriend's situation.