News of the Weird: Brothels for the Disabled

A Verizon risk team, looking for data breaches on a client's computers, discovered that one company software developer was basically idle for many months, yet remained productive — because he had outsourced his projects to a Chinese software developer who would do all the work and send it back. The employee earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, according to a January Los Angeles Times report, but paid the Chinese worker only about $50,000. The risk team eventually learned that sensitive company information was flowing to and from Chinese terminals, leading the company to suspect hackers, but that traffic was merely the U.S. employee (obviously, “ex-employee” now) sending and receiving his workload. The U.S. man showed up for work every day, but spent his time leisurely web-surfing.

By Chuck Shepherd

March 12, 2013