A compelling blend of high-stakes espionage, complex character dynamics, intricate plot twists, and a strong focus on the psychological toll of working undercover, often with the added tension of questioning who to trust within your own organization. Sounds like the plot of a good internal covert affairs movie…but could also be the summarization of an indictment released by the Justice Department on December 12, 2024.
A federal court in St. Louis Missouri, indicted 14 nationals of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) with long running conspiracies to violate U.S. sanctions and commit wire fraud and money laundering, and identity theft. In a scheme meant to finance their countries weapons program, Korean IT workers obtained salaried employment at numerous U.S.-based companies, companies that have unwittingly employed these illegal workers for years and have paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries. Adding to the intrigue of this scheme, these IT workers would leverage their access to proprietary corporate information to extort their U.S.-based employers for additional payments. These threats were not empty.
The conspirators used many techniques to conceal their North Korean identities from employers, which included using stolen identities belonging to U.S. persons to get jobs; paying U.S. citizens to attend job interviews in their place and work meetings remotely using fake identities; and designing phony websites to convince prospective employers that the false identities were qualified and previously employed by reputable contracting firms. The conspirators also paid U.S. citizens to receive, set up, and host laptops sent from employers to the U.S. citizens home addresses. In doing so, it appeared that these fake U.S.-based employees were accessing laptops to do work at home…all the while, the IT workers were in fact located outside the United States.
Shout out to the FBI in this case.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “North Korean Nationals Indicted in Scheme Using IT Workers to Funnel Money for Weapons Programs” published by US News on December 12, 2024.
Fourteen North Korean nationals have been indicted in a scheme using information technology workers with false identities to contract with U.S. companies — workers who then funneled their wages to North Korea for development of ballistic missiles and other weapons, the head of the FBI office in St. Louis said Thursday.
The scheme involving thousands of IT workers generated more than $88 million for the North Korean government, Ashley T. Johnson, special agent in charge of the St. Louis FBI office, said at a news conference. In addition to their wages, the workers stole sensitive information from companies or threatened to leak information in exchange for extortion payments, Johnson said.
