The United States has arrested an American woman and a Ukrainian man who are accused of helping IT workers linked to North Korea, who pretended to be Americans, to get jobs in hundreds of American companies on remote work conditions.
As European Truth writes, Reuters reports.
In the indictment submitted to the federal court in Washington last week and declassified on Thursday, it says that charges have been brought against Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, and Ukrainian Oleksandr Didenko, 27, of Kyiv, and three other foreign nationals.
The US Department of Justice said in a statement that Chapman was arrested on Wednesday, and Didenko – May 7, which the Polish authorities did at the request of the United States, which is seeking his extradition.
The US Department of Justice said that a complex scheme aimed at generating income for North Korea in defiance of international sanctions included the penetration of more than 300 American firms , including Fortune magazine companies and banks, as well as the theft of personal data of more than 60 Americans.
The Justice Department said in a statement that foreign IT professionals also tried to gain employment and access to information at two US government agencies, although those efforts were “generally unsuccessful.”
An earlier State Department statement said that the scheme netted the DPRK at least $6.8 million, while the North Koreans involved in the scheme were linked to North Korea's Munitions Industry Department, which oversees ballistic missile development, weapons production and research programs.
The State Department has announced a reward of up to $5 million for information related to Chapman's alleged accomplices, who used the aliases Jiho Han, Haoran Xu and Chunji Jin, as well as another person who has not been charged, using the aliases Zhonghua and Vencher C .
The head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Nicole Argentieri, said the alleged crimes “benefited the North Korean government by providing it with a stream of revenue and, in some cases, intelligence stolen by co-conspirators.”
< p>The department said that Didenko is accused of creating fake accounts on American IT job search platforms and selling them to foreign IT specialists, some of whom may be from North Korea.
The statement said that through “laptop farms,” including one that Chapman allegedly organized at her home, American intermediaries entered the computer networks of companies in the United States and allowed foreign IT professionals to remotely access laptops using American IP addresses. addresses to make them appear to be in the US.
North Korea is under UN sanctions aimed at cutting funding for its missile and nuclear programs, and experts say it has been trying to raise revenue illegally, including including with the help of IT workers.
The other day, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against two Russian individuals and three legal entities that facilitated the supply of weapons between Russia and North Korea.
The supply scheme of arms between Russia and North Korea is linked to Slovakian national arms dealer Ashot Mkrtychev, against whom the US imposed sanctions in March 2023. Despite this, Mkrtychev and his accomplices continued their activities through intermediaries.
As you know, Russia and North Korea have strengthened their military cooperation over the past year. It is known that Moscow received North Korean ballistic missiles and ammunition and promised Pyongyang in return its own technologies for satellite and missile programs.