Four Americans and a Ukrainian national who aided North Korea’s IT worker fraud involving U.S. companies pleaded guilty to their crimes, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a Nov. 14 statement.
The DOJ was also seeking forfeiture of more than $15 million in cryptocurrencies stolen and laundered by North Korean hackers. These nationwide actions aim to combat illicit revenue generated by the regime.
The North Korean government uses both information technology (IT) worker fraud and crypto theft to fund their weapons programs and other priorities, violating U.S. sanctions, the DOJ said.
The five individuals who pleaded guilty “assisted North Korean actors with obtaining remote IT employment with U.S. companies,” it stated, adding that the facilitators “provided their own, false, or stolen identities, and hosted U.S. victim company-provided laptops at residences across the United States to create the false appearance that the IT workers were working domestically.”…