It happens in private sector as well. We had a guy who moved from our team to one managed by a guy in the UK (his fellow teammates were local though). Since he was no longer directly involved with "Operations", he stopped coming into the office to work (our company is very work-from-home friendly with many fulltime home workers). However, after a few months, it became apparent he wasn't doing *anything*. Turns out, he was living a life of leisure on the West Coast.
Needless to say, he was fired for it, but he managed to get away with it for several months and probably would have continued to do so had Operations not needed him for some specific and time-sensitive tasks.
I knew a guy at another company that pulled that trick for a few months as well, though he did come back to the office before being caught by management.
Chris
