Two Americans sentenced for helping North Korea steal $5 million in fake IT employee scheme

Two American citizens were sentenced to seven-and-a-half years and nine years in prison for their roles in a scheme to help the North Korean government hire remote IT workers at American companies.

US Department of Justice, Wednesday Announce Sentencing Qijia Wang and Chen Xing Wang, both New Jersey residents. The two were accused of providing the infrastructure for the fraudulent scheme, specifically to operate or manage so-called “laptop farms” within the United States, which allowed North Koreans to connect to laptops and appear to live and work in the country.

The scheme netted North Korea about $5 million. It also involved conspirators who 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 take a paycheck, but also in some cases to steal trade secrets and source code, the Justice Department said.

“The stunt placed North Korean IT workers on the payrolls of unwitting U.S. companies and in U.S. computer systems, harming our national security,” John Eisenberg, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for national security, was quoted as saying in the announcement.

Prosecutors said that between 2021 and 2024, Kejia, working with co-conspirators, oversaw the operation of laptop farms made from hundreds of computers, while Zhenxing hosted the laptops at his home. The two also set up shell companies with financial accounts linked to the fake IT workers to funnel payments amounting to millions of dollars, which were later transferred abroad. “In exchange for their services, Kejia Wang, Chen Xing Wang, and the four other American facilitators received approximately $700,000 for their roles in the scheme,” the Justice Department’s announcement said.

In one case, according to the Department of Justice, fake IT workers were able to steal export-controlled data from an unnamed California-based artificial intelligence company.

US government Also announced Rewards of up to $5 million for information that could help counter these schemes, including data on nine individuals who allegedly worked with Kejia and Zhenxing.

This is the latest legal action against North Korea’s large-scale scheme that allowed fake IT workers He is hired by favorable From American and Western companies. along with Major cryptocurrency thefts worth over $2 billion were stolen in the past year aloneThe North Korean government uses this type of fraud to finance its regime and its weapons program, which is subject to severe sanctions that isolate it from much of the global economy.

To counter this threat, some companies and recruiters have come up with innovative strategies, such as asking North Korean suspects to insult Kim Jong Un, which is illegal in the country. In a recent viral video of a job interviewThe applicant can be seen groping after the interviewers asked him to say, “Kim Jong Un is an ugly, fat pig.” Finally he ended the call.