The software developer, who is in his 40s, is said to have paid a Chinese firm a fifth of his six-figure salary to do his job for him while he spent his working days surfing the internet.
The tale emerged via a blog by an computer forensic investigator at Verizon Business, a US-based communications firm.
Andrew Valentine claimed that his company had been contacted by another US-based firm, whom he does not name, who feared their systems were being hacked after noticing that someone in Shenyang, China was accessing the system.
According to Mr Valentine it became apparent upon investigation that one of the company's employees had outsourced his own job, paying a Chinese firm approximately $50,000 (£31,000) from his salary to write computer programmes on his behalf.
The employee, whom Mr Valentine describes as "inoffensive and quiet someone you wouldn't look at twice in an elevator", would then spend his day browsing the internet, looking at sites such as YouTube, Reddit, eBay and Facebook before sending his superiors a daily status report and going home.
Mr Valentine continued: "Authentication was no problem. He physically FedExed his RSA [security] token to China so that the third-party contractor could login under his credentials during the workday. It would appear that he was working an average nine-to-five work day."
He added: "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 fifty grand annually."
Mr Valentine said that the employee, who no longer works for the company, had even been praised for 'his' work.
"The best part?" he continued. "Investigators had the opportunity to read through his performance reviews while working alongside HR.
"For the last several years in a row he received excellent remarks.
His code was clean, well written, and submitted in a timely fashion.
Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building."
A spokesman for Verizon Business confirmed that the story was true, but declined to provide further details.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/north...ed-job-to-China.html
