North Korean technology workers posing as Americans signed remote employment contracts with hundreds of U.S. companies as part of a scheme to help finance Pyongyang’s illicit nuclear weapons and missile programs, the U.S. government said Thursday.
For three years beginning in October 2020, a U.S. citizen named Christina Chapman from Arizona helped three North Korean IT workers obtain “illegal telecommuting work” using the identities of U.S. citizens, netting them approximately $6.8 million earned, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
More than 300 U.S. companies were defrauded, the Justice Department said in a separate press release announcing charges against Chapman and other alleged co-conspirators.
