Submission + - Five people plead quilty to helping North Koreans infiltrate US companies (techcrunch.com)
smooth wombat writes: Within the past year, stories have been posted on Slashdot about people helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at U.S. corporations, companies knowingly helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs, how not to hire a North Korean for a remote IT job, and how a simple question tripped up a North Korean applying for a remote IT job. The FBI is even warning companies that North Koreans working remotely can steal source code and extort money from the company, money which goes to fund the North Korean government. Now, five more people have plead guilty to knowingly helping North Koreans infiltrate U.S. companies as remote IT workers.
The five people are accused of working as “facilitators” who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the DOJ press release.
These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un’s regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ.
Three of the people — U.S. nationals Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis — each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.
Prosecutors accused the three of helping North Koreans posing as legitimate IT workers, whom they knew worked outside of the United States, to use their own identities to obtain employment, helped them remotely access their company-issued laptops set up in their homes, and also helped the North Koreans pass vetting procedures, such as drug tests.
The fourth U.S. national who pleaded guilty is Erick Ntekereze Prince, who ran a company called Taggcar, which supplied to U.S. companies allegedly “certified” IT workers but whom he knew worked outside of the country and were using stolen or fake identities. Prince also hosted laptops with remote access software at several residences in Florida, and earned more than $89,000 for his work, the DOJ said.
Another participant in the scheme who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and another count of aggravated identity theft is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors accuse of stealing U.S. citizens’ identities and selling them to North Koreans so they could get jobs at more than 40 U.S. companies.
The five people are accused of working as “facilitators” who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the DOJ press release.
These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un’s regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ.
Three of the people — U.S. nationals Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis — each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.
Prosecutors accused the three of helping North Koreans posing as legitimate IT workers, whom they knew worked outside of the United States, to use their own identities to obtain employment, helped them remotely access their company-issued laptops set up in their homes, and also helped the North Koreans pass vetting procedures, such as drug tests.
The fourth U.S. national who pleaded guilty is Erick Ntekereze Prince, who ran a company called Taggcar, which supplied to U.S. companies allegedly “certified” IT workers but whom he knew worked outside of the country and were using stolen or fake identities. Prince also hosted laptops with remote access software at several residences in Florida, and earned more than $89,000 for his work, the DOJ said.
Another participant in the scheme who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and another count of aggravated identity theft is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors accuse of stealing U.S. citizens’ identities and selling them to North Koreans so they could get jobs at more than 40 U.S. companies.
