"Woman Accused of Helping North Korean IT Workers Infiltrate Hundreds of US Firms"
The Department of Justice (DoJ) recently announced charges, seizures, arrests, and rewards as part of an effort to disrupt a scheme in which North Korean IT workers infiltrated hundreds of companies and earned millions of dollars for North Korea. According to the DoJ, North Korea has dispatched thousands of skilled IT workers around the world. These workers stole the identities of people living in the United States and leveraged them to get jobs at more than 300 companies. The DoJ noted that this allowed them to earn significant amounts of money for North Korea and obtain valuable access to information and networks. The DoJ announced charges against 49-year-old Christina Marie Chapman of Arizona over her alleged role in assisting North Korean IT workers with getting jobs in the United States between October 2020 and October 2023. Chapman allegedly helped them pose as US persons and ran a laptop farm at her residence to make it appear that the computers used by the North Koreans were logging in from the United States. Chapman is also accused of helping transfer the money generated by the scheme outside the US. The DoJ said that the scheme helped North Korean IT workers get jobs at Fortune 500 companies, including a major TV network, a car manufacturer, a Silicon Valley tech firm, an aerospace manufacturer, a luxury retail store, and a media and entertainment company. The IT workers, who earned at least $6.8 million, even attempted to obtain jobs at two US government agencies. The scheme is said to have involved more than 60 stolen identities, and in dozens of cases, the fraudsters’ actions created false tax liabilities for the impacted individuals. The authorities have seized funds related to the scheme from Chapman, who faces more than 97 years in prison. In addition to Chapman, who was arrested in the United States, the law enforcement operation also resulted in the arrest of 27-year-old Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko in Poland. The US is seeking Didenko’s extradition. Didenko is accused of running a service that created accounts at US-based freelance IT job search platforms and with money service transmitters, which could be used by overseas IT workers to pose as people based in the US and obtain jobs. The State Department announced on Thursday that it’s offering rewards of up to $5 million for information related to the North Korean individuals who worked with Chapman. They used the aliases Jiho Han, Haoran Xu, Chunji Jin, and Zhonghua.