From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishin the pay of somebodyin the pay of somebodywrittenWORK FOR somebody someone who is in someone else’s pay is working for them, often secretly an informer in the pay of the police → pay
Examples from the Corpus
in the pay of somebody• Look, a lot of the police are in the pay of the big villains.• Himself is right: half of them must be in the pay of the Foley Street mob.• The study will analyse difference in the pay of individuals in the public and private sectors of the economy.• I am not in the pay of any man, Mr Advocate.• If its people called you a liberal subversive in the pay of effete capitalist Western powers it was regarded as fair comment.• Police and prosecutors, especially those in the pay of rival cartels, have been a special Arellano target.• Several cops were in the pay of Colombian drug lords.• This was the main reason the Pharisees hated the tax-collectors: they were in the pay of the Romans. 