> Not having the right to control only the result makes them an employee which in turn makes them eligible for benefits and so on. This is the specific differen

> Not having the right to control only the result makes them an employee which in turn makes them eligible for benefits and so on. This is the specific difference between a contractor and an employee. This isn't actually even the root issue. The contractor almost certainly violated their contract by sharing NDA-covered materials with an unauthorized third party. The contractor also shared access credentials to the company's systems with someone else and then facilitated fraudulent interactions wherein one person claimed to be someone else. Being a contractor doesn't give someone carte blanche authority to do whatever they want with the company's materials (codebase, design documents) and secured systems.