Only in America: Pay to play

An American worker secretly outsources his duties to China so he can browse Reddit all day — and more in our collection of strange revelations about the nation

Pay to play
(Image credit: ThinkStock/Polka Dot)

Verizon claims to have caught an employee — "Bob" — outsourcing his daily coding duties to China so he could spend his time browsing Reddit, watching cat videos, and surfing eBay. Bob's bosses were tipped off when VPN logs showed Bob's log-in details being input from Shenyang, China. Apparently, Bob — who regularly received "excellent" performance reviews — pulled this scam on multiple companies at the same time. He was reportedly raking in a couple hundred thousand dollars annually. PDF invoices discovered on his computer reportedly show that he paid the Chinese firm $50,000 a year.

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Chris Gayomali is the science and technology editor for TheWeek.com. Previously, he was a tech reporter at TIME. His work has also appeared in Men's Journal, Esquire, and The Atlantic, among other places. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.