Two US citizens have been sentenced to seven and a half years and nine years in prison for their roles in a scheme to help the North Korean government place remote IT workers with US companies.
On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice was announced the conviction of Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang, both residents of New Jersey; The two were accused of providing infrastructure for the fraudulent scheme, specifically operating or managing so-called “laptop farms” inside the US that allowed North Koreans to connect to the laptops and appear to be living and working in the country.
The plan netted North Korea about $5 million. He also participated in conspiracies that stole the identities of more than 80 Americans and obtained employment at more than 100 American companies, including some Fortune 500 companies, according to the Justice Department. It also allowed North Korean IT workers not only to receive a salary, but in some cases to steal trade secrets and source code, the Justice Department said.
“The ruse put North Korean IT workers on the payrolls of unwitting US companies and on US computer systems, thereby harming our national security,” John A. Eisenberg, DOJ’s assistant attorney general for Homeland Security, was quoted as saying in the statement.
Prosecutors said that between 2021 and 2024, together with co-conspirators, Kejia Wang oversaw the operation of laptop farms from hundreds of computers, while Zhenxing Wang hosted laptops at his home. The two also set up shell companies with financial accounts linked to fake IT workers to funnel millions of dollars in payments, which were later transferred overseas. “In exchange for their services, Kejia Wang, Zhenxing Wang and the four other US facilitators received nearly $700,000 for their respective roles in the scheme,” the DOJ statement said.
In one case, according to the DOJ, fake IT workers were able to steal data under export control from an unnamed California-based artificial intelligence company.
The US government was also announced rewards of up to $5 million for information that could help counter those plans, including data on nine people who allegedly worked with Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang.
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This is the latest legal action against North Korea’s sprawling system that has allowed fake IT workers to be hired by hundreds of US and Western companies. Along with major cryptocurrency thefts of over $2 billion last year alone, the North Korean government uses this type of fraud to fund its regime and weapons program, which is under heavy sanctions that cut it off from much of the global economy.
To counter this threat, some companies and recruiters have come up with inventive strategies, such as asking suspected North Koreans to insult Kim Jong Un, which is illegal in the country. In a recent viral video of a job interview, the candidate can be seen fuming after the interviewers asked him to say “Kim Jong Un is a fat ugly pig.” He finally hung up.
