A Tennessee man has been arrested on suspicion of raising money for North Korea's weapons program, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Matthew Isaac Nuth is accused of helping North Korean workers “impersonate U.S. citizens” as part of a scheme to recruit them to U.S. and British technology companies. He is also accused of conspiring to launder money earned by those workers through financial accounts linked to North Korean and Chinese persons, the Justice Department said.
Nout allegedly ran a “laptop farm” from his Nashville home that gave North Koreans access to American internet connections. He placed corporate laptops in the home and downloaded and installed unauthorized software on them to provide access and cover their tracks, making it appear that the workers were in the United States rather than China, as they were.
The scheme misled unnamed U.S. media, technology and financial companies, costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, the department said.
Each of the North Korean workers linked to Nooth received more than $250,000 for their services between July 2022 and August 2023. Much of that income was falsely reported to the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of another person whose identity was misused. The funds were sent to North Korea for use in its weapons program, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department reported uncovering similar schemes. In May, the U.S. authorities charged an Arizona woman, a Ukrainian citizen and three unnamed foreign nationals with facilitating the employment of North Korean-linked workers in remote positions at U.S. companies. In this case, IT workers also posed as US citizens or permanent residents. The Justice Department noted that the fraudulent scheme affected more than 300 US companies.
Prepared by: Sergey Daga