Two U.S. citizens received prison sentences of seven and a half and nine years for aiding the North Korean government in placing remote IT workers within American companies.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday the sentencing of Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang from New Jersey. They were charged with running the scheme’s infrastructure, including “laptop farms” in the U.S. These allowed North Koreans to access the laptops, giving the impression of being based in the country.
This scheme generated approximately $5 million for North Korea. Co-conspirators also stole identities of over 80 Americans, securing jobs at more than 100 U.S. corporations, some in the Fortune 500, according to the DOJ. This enabled North Korean workers to earn salaries and, at times, steal trade secrets and source codes.
“The scheme placed North Korean IT workers on the payrolls of unsuspecting U.S. companies and within U.S. computer systems, endangering our national security,” said John A. Eisenberg, DOJ’s assistant attorney general for National Security.
Prosecutors revealed that between 2021 and 2024, with co-conspirators, Kejia ran laptop farms with hundreds of computers, while Zhenxing housed laptops at home. They also set up shell companies with financial accounts tied to the fake IT workers to move millions of dollars overseas. “Kejia Wang, Zhenxing Wang, and four other U.S. facilitators received nearly $700,000 each for their roles,” stated the DOJ.
In one instance, fake IT workers managed to acquire export-controlled data from an unnamed California AI company.
The U.S. government offered rewards up to $5 million for information aiding in combating these schemes, including data on nine individuals allegedly involved with Kejia and Zhenxing.
This is the latest legal measure against a North Korean scheme allowing fake IT workers to be employed by numerous American and Western companies. Alongside crypto thefts over $2 billion last year, North Korea uses such frauds to fund its regime and weapons program, heavily sanctioned globally.
To tackle this threat, companies and recruiters employ unique strategies, like asking suspected North Koreans to denounce Kim Jong-Un, illegal in North Korea. In a viral job interview video, an applicant stumbled when asked to say “Kim Jong Un is a fat ugly pig” and eventually ended the call.