- Hire 5 guys, on the books.
- Those guys each bring 5 guys, off the books. (illegal immigrants)
- Those 5 guys on the books get paid for all 25 guys and distribute it within their team.
It's a bit sad to hear about this sort of thing happening, but it seems all too common in business.
That same person told me about another story-- regarding quality:
- At another job site, the company had a new project manager. The new PM approved moving forward into a new phase of the project without plans (plans didn't arrive by the time contractor arrived). The contractor of that project build something incorrectly (as you'd expect) due to lack of coordination with other contracting teams (i.e. lack of plans). The result: $1-2 mil worth of work needing to get fixed.