Two U.S. citizens, Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang, have been sentenced to seven and a half years and nine years in prison respectively for their role in helping North Korea run a fraudulent IT worker scheme.
The duo provided infrastructure such as 'laptop farms' inside the United States, allowing North Korean workers to appear as if they were living and working within American companies. The scam cost U.S. firms around $5 million and involved stealing identities of more than 80 Americans, with some trade secrets also allegedly compromised.
The ruse placed North Korean IT workers on the payrolls of unsuspecting U.S. companies and into their computer systems, posing a significant national security threat according to John A. Eisenberg from the DOJ’s National Security Division.
This is part of North Korea's broader scheme to fund its regime through such fraudulent activities, alongside crypto thefts worth over $2 billion in recent years. The U.S. government has now offered up to $5 million for information that could help counter these schemes.
