An American software developer apparently hired a Chinese company to do his job, effectively outsourcing it to China.

However, the developer kept showing up at work, keeping up appearances if you like. He spent his days watching cat videos on Youtube and browsing the net. Meanwhile his job was being taken care of by a company in Shenyang. He reportedly paid the company just one fifth of his six-figure salary for the service.

Eventually his shenanigans came to light, after his company asked Verizon to audit its infrastructure, citing anomalous activities recorded in VPN logs. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on and the developer got canned. But he did have a good run. The company discovered he used the VPN connection to shuffle his work to Shenyang for months. Further investigation also revealed hundreds of PDF documents and invoices from the Chinese contractor.

"Evidence even suggested he had the same scam going across multiple companies in the area. All told, it looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about $50,000 (£31,270) annually," said Verizon rep Andrew Valentine.

Of course, we are not disputing that what the developer did was wrong and unethical, but what he did is not all that different from what major companies do on a regular basis. The only problem appears to be that he pocketed the money himself, rather than the company. With that in mind, they could have very well given him a promotion and asked him to outsource more work to China.

More here.