Two Americans have been sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison and nine years in prison for their roles in a scheme to help the North Korean government remotely deploy IT personnel to American companies.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing of New Jersey residents Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang. The two are accused of providing the infrastructure for the scheme, specifically the operation or management of so-called “laptop farms” in the United States, which allowed North Koreans to connect to laptops and appear as if they were living and working in the country.
The project netted North Korea about $5 million in profits. The co-conspirators stole the identities of more than 80 Americans, including obtaining jobs at more than 100 U.S. companies, including some of the Fortune 500, according to the Justice Department. This has allowed North Korean IT workers to not only earn a paycheck but also, in some cases, steal trade secrets and source code, the Justice Department said.
John A. Eisenberg, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for national security, was quoted as saying in a statement: “This scheme unwittingly placed North Korean IT workers on the payrolls of U.S. companies and onto U.S. computer systems, thereby undermining our national security.”
According to prosecutors, from 2021 to 2024, Kejia worked with co-conspirators to oversee the operation of a laptop farm consisting of hundreds of computers, while Zhenxing kept the laptops at his home. The two also set up a shell company with financial accounts linked to fake IT workers, collecting payments amounting to millions of dollars and then transferring them overseas. “Kejia Wang, Zhenxing Wang, and four other U.S. caretakers received nearly $700,000 for their respective roles in the scheme in exchange for their services,” the Justice Department's announcement said.
In one case, a fake IT official was able to steal data under export controls from an anonymous AI company based in California, according to the Justice Department.
The U.S. government also announced rewards of up to $5 million for information that could help counter these schemes, including data on nine individuals who allegedly collaborated with Kejia and Zhenxing.
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This is the latest legal action against North Korea's wide-ranging scheme that has allowed hundreds of US and Western companies to hire fake IT workers. In addition to massive cryptocurrency theft worth more than $2 billion last year alone, the North Korean government uses this type of fraud to fund its regime and weapons programs, and the country is under harsh sanctions that isolate it from much of the global economy.
To counter this threat, some companies and recruiters are devising creative strategies, such as asking North Korean suspects to insult Kim Jong Un, which is illegal in the country. A recent video of a job interview that went viral shows an applicant fumbling as the interviewer asks him to say, “Kim Jong Un is a fat, ugly pig.” Eventually he hung up.