United States: North Koreans posing as American tech workers to fund weapons

Posing as Americans, North Korean technology workers secured remote work contracts with hundreds of US companies as part of a scheme to help fund Pyongyang’s illicit nuclear weapons and missile programs, the US government said on Thursday.

For three years, starting in October 2020, a US national named Christina Chapman of Arizona helped three North Korean IT workers obtain “illicit telework employment” using the identities of US citizens, earning about $6.8 million, the State Department said.

More than 300 US companies were defrauded in the effort, the Justice Department said in a separate release, announcing charges against Chapman and other alleged co-conspirators.

The North Korean workers also tried and failed to gain employment with and information from two US government agencies, according to the US. 

The workers are linked to North Korea’s ballistic missile, weapons production and research and development programs, the State Department said. 

The companies that hired the workers weren’t identified, nor were the agencies that didn’t hire them.

Chapman not only helped steal US identities but ran a “laptop farm” by hosting computers issued by the US companies on behalf of the North Korean workers, the Justice Department said, operating them from her home so that it looked like the North Korean workers were based in the US.

She also allegedly helped launder the proceeds with her own financial accounts by receiving, processing and distributing their paychecks, the department added. 

That resulted in US companies to filing false documentation to the Department of Homeland Security and false reports to the Internal Revenue Service.

The US also charged Oleksandr Didenko of Kyiv, Ukraine, with engaging in a years-long effort to create accounts using false identities at US-based freelance IT job search platforms and money service companies, according to the Justice Department.

He ran a platform that allowed remote IT workers to buy or rent accounts using identities other than their own on various platforms, the department said.