A no-show job is a paid position that ostensibly requires the holder to perform duties, but for which no work, or even attendance, is actually expected. The awarding of no-show jobs is a form of

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

corporate corruption In criminology, corporate crime refers to crimes committed either by a corporation (i.e., a business entity having a separate legal personality from the natural persons that manage its activities), or by individuals acting on behalf of a corpo ...

. A no-work job is a similar paid position for which no work is expected, but for which attendance at the job site is required. Upon auditing or inspection, personnel assigned to a no-work job may be falsely justified to the controllers as waiting for work tasks or not being needed "right now". For example: no-show or no-work jobs may be used during illegal activities for scamming a construction project to generate extra payout or to provide

alibi An alibi (from the Latin, '' alibī'', meaning "somewhere else") is a statement by a person, who is a possible perpetrator of a crime, of where they were at the time a particular offence was committed, which is somewhere other than where the crim ...

Organized crime and corruption

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' has written: "The no-show job has long played a central role in the annals of

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...

and corruption in New York, offering an efficient way for crooked politicians,

union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

officials,

mobsters A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from '' mob'' and the suffix '' -ster''. Gangs provide a level of organization a ...

and all manner of miscreants to funnel kickbacks and bribes to friends, family members, business associates and even themselves". Philip Carlo, in his biography of Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, writes that no-show jobs are "a classic

Mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...

setup" and that such positions were highly prized among mobsters. A 2012 report of the

Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor (WCNYH) is a regulatory agency in Port of New York and New Jersey in the United States. The bi-state agency was founded in 1953 by a Congressional authorized compact between New York and New Jersey "for t ...

found that "no-show jobs held by relatives of mobsters and other well-connected people continue to vex government officials trying to make the ports more efficient and more competitive". In the past, no-show jobs were also an aspect of corruption in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. No-show jobs continue to play a role in corruption cases in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, where they have had a long history.

Corporate fraud

In the corporate world, "no-show" employees—also called ghost employees—usually have some family or personal relationship to a manager or supervisor. In the corporate world, this is considered a type of

payroll A payroll is the list of employees of some company that is entitled to receive payments as well as other work benefits and the amounts that each should receive. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks pe ...

fraud. Fraud audits seek to detect such practices.Leonard W. Vona, ''The Fraud Audit: Responding to the Risk of Fraud in Core Business Systems'' (John Wiley & Sons, 2011), pp. 214-15.

References

{{reflist Corruption Organized crime activity Organized crime terminology

Organized crime and corruption

Corporate fraud

See also

References