North Koreans posed as US tech workers to fund nuclear weapons, State Department says

The State Department said American Christina Chapman helped three North Koreans in an ‘illicit telework employment’ scheme that earned US$6.8 million for Pyongyang

She also ran a ‘laptop farm’ by hosting computers issued by the US companies on behalf of the North Korean workers

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North Korea conducts a missile drill at an undisclosed location. Photo: KCNA/KNS/dpa

Published: 10:20am, 17 May 2024Updated: 10:31am, 17 May 2024

Posing as Americans, North Korean technology workers secured remote work contracts with hundreds of US companies as part of a scheme to help fund Pyongyang’s illicit nuclear weapons and missile programmes, the US government said on Thursday.

For three years, starting in October 2020, a US national named Christina Chapman of Arizona helped three North Korean IT workers obtain “illicit telework employment” using the identities of US citizens, earning about US$6.8 million, the State Department said.

More than 300 US companies were defrauded in the effort, the Justice Department said in a separate release, announcing charges against Chapman and other alleged co-conspirators.

“The charges describe a years’ long campaign by the North Korean government to infiltrate US job markets through fraud in an effort to raise revenue for the North Korean government and its illicit nuclear programme,” the Justice Department said.

The North Korean workers also tried and failed to gain employment with – and information from – two US government agencies, according to the US. The workers are linked to North Korea’s ballistic missile, weapons production and research and development programmes, the State Department said. The companies that hired the workers weren’t identified, nor were the agencies that didn’t hire them.

Chapman not only helped steal US identities but ran a “laptop farm” by hosting computers issued by the US companies on behalf of the North Korean workers, the Justice Department said, operating them from her home so that it looked like the North Korean workers were based in the US.

She also allegedly helped launder the proceeds with her own financial accounts by receiving, processing and distributing their pay cheques, the department added. That resulted in US companies to filing false documentation to the Department of Homeland Security and false reports to the Internal Revenue Service.