The Justice Department announced Thursday the arrests of three people in connection with an elaborate identity theft scheme that officials say generates enormous profits for the North Korean government, including for its drug program. armament.
The scheme involves thousands of North Korean information technology workers who prosecutors say are sent by the government to live overseas and who rely on the stolen identities of Americans to get jobs at remotely at U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies, jobs that give them access to sensitive business activities. lucrative data and salaries.
This fraud is a way for North Korea, heavily sanctioned and cut off from the American financial system, to take advantage of a “toxic mix” of converging factors, including the shortage of high-tech labor in the United States and the proliferation of teleworking. Marshall Miller, the Justice Department’s principal deputy attorney general, said in an interview.
The Justice Department says these cases are part of a broader strategy to not only pursue individuals who enable fraud, but also to partner with other countries and warn private sector companies about the need to be vigilant with regard to the people they hire. FBI and Justice Department officials launched an initiative in March and announced last year the seizure of website domains used by North Korean computer scientists.
“More and more often, the compliance programs of American companies and organizations are on the front lines of protecting our national security,” “Corporate compliance and national security are now intertwined like never before. »
The Justice Department says the conspiracy affected more than 300 companies — including a high-end retail chain and “Silicon Valley’s first technology company” — and generated more than $6.8 million in proceeds. income for workers based outside the United States, including China and Russia.
The three people arrested include an Arizona woman, Christina Marie Chapman, who prosecutors say facilitated the scheme by helping workers obtain and validate stolen identities, receiving laptops from U.S. companies that believed sending devices to legitimate employees and helping workers connect remotely. to the company.
According to the indictment, Chapman ran more than one “laptop farm” where U.S. companies sent computers and paychecks to computer workers they didn’t know were overseas. .
At Chapman’s laptop farms, she allegedly connected foreign IT workers who connected remotely to the company’s networks, so that it appeared the connections were coming from the United States. She also allegedly received paychecks at home for foreign IT workers, forging recipient signatures for overseas transfer and enriching herself by charging monthly fees.
The other two defendants include a Ukrainian, Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors say created fake accounts on job search platforms and was arrested in Poland last week, and a Vietnamese national, Minh Phuong Vong, who was arrested Thursday in Maryland on charges of obtaining fraudulently. a job at a US company that was actually done by remote workers posing as him and based overseas.
It was not immediately clear whether any of the three had an attorney.
Separately, the State Department announced it would offer a reward for information on certain North Korean computer scientists who authorities say were aided by Chapman.
And the FBI, which led the investigation, issued a public service announcement warning companies about the system, encouraging them to implement identity verification standards throughout the hiring process and raise awareness among human resources staff and hiring managers about the threat.
