North Korean IT Pros Steal Remote Jobs With US Corporations

(PatriotPostNews.com) – The Justice Department last week unsealed indictments involving a scheme by North Korea to obtain IT jobs at American companies by dispatching thousands of foreign workers using stolen or borrowed American identities to “pose as domestic workers,” while infiltrating the computer networks of American companies and stealing money for the North Korean regime.

According to a May 16 press release, the Justice Department filed charges against Litchfield Park, Arizona resident Christina Marie Chapman, 49, Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, 27, and three unnamed foreign nationals for their roles in the scheme to place foreign IT workers posing as American citizens or US legal residents in remote jobs in American companies.

Chapman was accused of helping to place foreign workers in over 300 US companies. Didenko was charged in a separate scheme to create phony accounts on American job search sites and with US-based payment platforms.

According to Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, Chapman and her co-conspirators stole the identities of US citizens to enable foreign nationals “to pose as domestic, remote IT workers” for the benefit of the North Korean government.

The companies Chapman and her co-conspirators defrauded included financial institutions, banks, and even several well-known Fortune 500 companies. Chapman’s cell compromised the identities of over 60 US citizens, the Justice Department said.

According to the unsealed records, Oleksandr Didenko sold the phony accounts he created to foreign IT workers, some of whom were likely North Koreans. The foreign workers then used the false accounts to apply for remote jobs with US companies. The identities of several US citizens were used in Didenko’s scheme.

According to the Justice Department, some of Didenko’s foreign IT workers also worked with Christina Chapman.

In a May 2022 advisory, the FBI, State Department, and Treasury Department warned the public and private sectors about the threat of unwittingly employing North Korean IT workers.

In a joint update issued last October, the US and South Korea included indicators consistent with North Korean IT worker fraud that companies should watch for.