What kind of fraud in remote work?
Constantly acting confused after acing the interview. Never getting anything done and insisting on pairing with somebody else who just did the work for them.
Essentially the goal seemed to be to collect a paycheck for as long as possible until somebody noticed and you ended up fired. I heard variations of this from a few people and saw one first hand.
But what exclusive right does your employer have to your labor? That depends on your contract of course.
So if you signed away exclusive access to your labor, it's fraud. And that's not uncommon - there's often at least a "you will disclose other employment" clause in developer at-will contracts. That said, I think the only consequence of not disclosing is potentially getting fired with cause if you get found out. IANAL but I don't know of precedent for clawing back pay (which would be fitting for actual fraud).
If you didn't, then it's your employer trying to get more than they signed. And in that case, the lie is a necessary evil.
Full-time employees are salaried. They cost the same no matter how much work they do. So full-time employers want them to do as much work as possible. They view time as zero-sum, so any hours you spend on another job are hours you could have spent on them. Even if - as we all know - there are diminishing returns on hours and those hours at job 2 would not produce the same output if pumped into job 1.
So, as always, full-time employers resort to soft power and psychological tricks to exert control over salaried employees. And I'd say it's increasing lately because remote work as shifted the power imbalance and employers are realizing the other side of at-will, salaried employment is that employees can work as little for them as they can get away with so long as they are good enough to remain willfully employed.
They're all very similar, American salaried at-will agreements.
They say that
1. I must disclose any prior agreement that may affect my eligibility to be employed by Employer.
2. I must disclose any outside activities.
3. I am employed at-will.
(2) doesn't mean I can't have another job, but combined with (3) it does in practice.
The 100% virtual hiring process means that it is much easier to sub out your interview as there’s no point in the process where you show up for an on-site, present your government issued ID, and then interview.
This is nothing new, it's just a media blitz by status quo lovers.