In May, a senior official in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration warned state agency leaders about suspected fraud involving hourly computer programmers
Lothumalla and another person who owns a New York computer software programming company that has done contract work for state government agencies — and spoke on the condition of not being identified — said that it’s common for the programmers employed by private vendors to not even do the work. Instead, they said, those programmers may have someone who is located elsewhere in the U.S. — or in India — doing their work remotely while the person is sitting in a state government office.
The companies that employ those individuals, they said, often take a larger cut of the hourly workers’ salary than is reported to the government agencies they work for. And the practice dates back years.