That title is very misleading.
The facts are convoluted as well.
This is a mix of greed, espionage, incompetent government agencies, and companies that do not vet their remote workers yet giving them access to software and data they shouldn't have. Crazy. But with the stories coming out of DOGE, I am not even shocked.
At least in this case one person (out of how many?) is going to jail. How many more of these people exist in the US now?
Sounds like this guy was an effective contract engineering vendor, just without the contracts. Assuming these 13 remote employees were doing a satisfactory job for his employers, I wonder if the employers would have been OK with the arrangement if he were open and transparent about the outsourcing. Were they all national security sensitive jobs?