The U.S. Department of Justice logo is seen on a podium before a news conference in Washington May 4. [AP/YONHAP]
Two Americans who helped North Korean information technology (IT) workers fraudulently get jobs at U.S. companies by disguising them as U.S.-based employees have been sentenced to prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday.
The case involves the seventh and eighth sentences tied to so-called laptop farms in the United States, underscoring Washington’s continued crackdown on schemes it says funnel money to Pyongyang’s weapons programs.
The scam involves remote logins by North Korean IT workers into laptops kept at a physical address in the United States, often under stolen or forged identities, enabling the workers to appear as if they are based in the country.
Matthew Isaac Knoot of Tennessee and Erick Ntekereze Prince of New York were each sentenced to 18 months in prison. Both men received and hosted laptops at their homes after U.S. companies shipped them to workers believed to be based at those addresses.
Knoot and Prince installed remote-access software on the company devices that allowed North Korean workers located in places such as China to appear as if they were working in the United States.
"In total, the defendants’ separate fraudulent schemes generated more than $1.2 million in revenue for the DPRK and impacted nearly 70 victim companies in the United States," the Justice Department's press release said, referring to North Korea by the initialism for its official name.
“These sentences hold accountable U.S nationals who enabled North Korea’s illicit efforts to infiltrate U.S. networks and profit on the back of U.S. companies,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a press release on Wednesday.
“These defendants helped North Korean ‘IT workers’ masquerade as legitimate employees, compromising U.S. corporate networks and helping generate revenue for a heavily sanctioned and rogue regime. The National Security Division will continue to pursue those who, through deception and cyber-enabled fraud, threaten our national security.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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